View of Oder River and harbour in Szczecin

In the first decades of the 20th century, artists depicting Szczecin harbour used several approaches. One of them was the wharf with granaries, located on the river island of Łasztownia (Lastadie), shown, among others, in an oil painting by Hans Hartig (1873-1936), a Szczecin artist specialising in maritime motifs and landscapes. Hartig was the son of a pastor from Stołczyn and as a teenager he attended the municipal gymnasium in Szczecin. He continued his education in Gardziec, and took up studies at the Academy of Art in Berlin, where he first studied in the atelier of Paul Vorgang (1860-1927), and then under the supervision of an outstanding landscape painter Eugen Bracht (1842-1921), with whom he made an artistic journey to Dresden in 1902. A year earlier, he had made his debut at the Great Art Exhibition in Berlin, where his works met with critical and audience acclaim, and the painting Oder Valley, a veduta of Stargard, was purchased for the collection of the Berlin National Gallery. From then on, Hartig became a recognised landscape painter, exhibiting his work in New York, Rome and Venice. In 1906, he settled down in Berlin and repeatedly went on plein-air painting trips to Masuria, Wolin, near Karnice, Nowe Warpno and Szczecin, from where he brought back sketches and paintings. He also made prints, especially colour lithographs. In 1913, a monographic exhibition was organised in Szczecin. His famous painting Die alte Baumbrücke zu Stettin dates from that year. In 1914, the artist won a gold medal at the Berlin exhibition, and as a member of the Pommersche Künstlerbund he took part in the Szczecin exhibitions between 1916 - 1936.

Małgorzata Peszko