Aleksander Gryglewski – dokumentalista zabytków Krakowa

ALEKSANDER GRYGLEWSKI: A DOCUMENTARIST OF KRAKÓW MONUMENTS The collection of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków (MHK) includes a few works by Aleksander Gryglewski featuring historic buildings in Kraków painted with nearly photographic accuracy, in compliance of the author’s idea to document the past. The artist was a continuator of the type of painting commemorating Kraków that had originated in the first half of the 19th century and had as its representatives such painters as Michał Stachowicz and his son Teodor Baltazar, Jan Nepomucen Głowacki, Jerzy Głogowski, Józef Brodowski, Bogumił Gąsiorowski, or Aleksander Płonczyński. The idea behind documenting the past emerged in the patriotically inclined Kraków circle that was influenced by history and national mementoes and had a particularly strong impact on the work of local artists. In the historical painting that developed in the second half of the 19th century, such painters as Jan Matejko were inspired by Kraków’s monuments as well as eminent figures, such as the historian Józef Szujski, archaeologists, conservators, or art historians. A special role was attached at that time to the School of Fine Arts with one of its most outstanding professors, Władysław Łuszczkiewicz, painter and art historian, a precursor of the educational and artistic excursions during which historic monuments were inventoried and an initiator of activities pertaining to inventorying and looking after the monuments. The patriotic youth society was also active within the circle of the School of Fine Arts in Kraków; its members were assembling in the studio of sculptor and conservator Parys Filippi at the former refectory in the Franciscan Monastery. The meetings were attended by such artists as Artur Grottger, Jan Matejko, Florian Cynk, Aleksander Gryglewski, the future composer Władysław Żeleński, as well as graduates from the Jagiellonian University, such as Józef Szujski, Michał Bałucki. The group’s heyday fell on the years preceding the outbreak of the January Uprising (1863); its members strove after stimulating the social, intellectual and cultural life in Kraków. One of the goals behind that agenda was to inventory historic works of art, a demand put forth back in the 18th century and later also in Congress Poland (1815–1918). Patriotic societies were initiating and expanding such activities on the territories under all three partition powers; in Galicia, among such instigators were Józef Łepkowski and, some time later, Stanisław Tomkowicz. Influenced by such ideas and great personalities, Gryglewski developed an interest in monuments, especially those in Kraków, and in documenting them. He would occasionally produce genre drawings or paintings and involve himself in caricatures and landscapes, though still treated the latter as a background for his depictions of architecture. Apart from oil painting, he also produced watercolours and drawings in pencil. Gryglewski’s paintings and drawings are in the collections of a number of museums across Poland, perhaps most of them in the National Museum branches in Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Warsaw and Gdańsk. His works are instilled with the spirit of Romantic historicism that corresponds to the tradition of the veduta painting in Europe and, at the same time, are typical for the period in which they were produced with regard to its fascination in the mementos of the past and in the Romantic and patriotic idea of preserving the national legacy in art. The artist left a number of paintings characterized by the impeccably drawn perspective and the attention to detail, which are now of documentary value and during conservatory works offer complementary information about the featured object. Most of the paintings in the collection of the MHK were produced in the 1870s, during the mature period in the painter’s artistic life. Three out of the six paintings discussed in the article are oils on canvass, while the other three are watercolours. They are characterized by extraordinary accuracy in painting details as well as perfect perspective. In 1869, Gryglewski painted A View of Kanonicza Street as Seen from St Mary Magdalene Plaza, with Wawel Castle in the Back. In the discussed group of paintings, the most detailed work is A View of the Inside of the Church of the Holy Cross in Kraków, produced probably in the 1870s. Another painting, A View of the Wawel Cathedral from the South, with the Sigismund Chapel and the Chapel of the House of Vasa, is dated to 1870, while The Chapel of the Holy Cross at the Wawel Cathedral was painted before 1870. An interesting theme is presented in the watercolour from the 1870s featuring A View of the Corpus Christi Church.