Self-portait

Julian Fałat studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1869-1871. In 1877-1880, he undertook his artistic education at the Royal-Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he attended the atelier of Alexander Strähuber and Johann Raab. At the beginning of the 1880s, a creative stance that had a realistic and critical depiction of social relations at the core was clarified. In some works, the artist depicted scenes from the everyday life of the city's poor districts with a strong realist flair. In the 1890s, Fałat became a representative of Polish luminist painting, namely, a trend reinterpreting the principles of French impressionism. Since then, his works have been characterised by lightness and spontaneity of composition. In the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin, there is Autoportret [The Self-Portrait] from 1915 when the artist had already retired and moved permanently to his estate in Bystra in Cieszyn Silesia. It is a watercolour in which Fałat managed to create an image of a mature, somewhat lofty artist with a clear, intense gaze directed not directly at the viewer but into the distance as if he was staring at something penetratingly. He has managed to achieve the effect of a three-dimensional hat, which is as meticulously depicted as the artist's face itself. The painter achieved an exciting effect thanks to the use of intense blue colour in many parts of the portrait.

Beata Małgorzata Wolska