Tadeusz Sulima-Popiel — życie i twórczość. Motyw sybirski w malarstwie arty

Abstract

TADEUSZ SULIMA-POPIEL, CRACOW PAINTER. THE SIBERIAN THEME IN THE WORKS OF THIS ARTIST

Tadeusz Sulima-Popiel was born in Szczucin in Tarnów county, in 1863, the son of Antoni, clerk in the Royal Imperial Central Office, and Antonina, whose maiden name was Stanicek. Having completed high school in Brody, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow in 1876. He was an extremely conscientious and talented student. He enjoyed much sympathy and support from the school director, Jan Matejko, the most popular Polish painter in the second half of the 19th century and creator of the Polish school of historical painting. After graduation from the Cracow sschool, Popiel set off to Vienna and then to Munich for further studies (1885-1888). In Vienna he studied under the direction of Hans Makart, and in Munich under Karl Piloty and Aleksander Wagner. When he came back to Poland, he devoted himself intently to creative work. As he was very hardworking and talented, he soon gained popularity and was recognized among critics in Poland and abroad. Among the greatest achievements of the young artist at that time was a bronze medal at the Paris Salon in 1890 for the painting Moses Returning from Mount Sinai, and the gold medal at the World Exhibition in San Francisco, 1892; and then, in the same year, gold medals in Chicago and Philadelphia, for his painting After the Tempest. Popiel was also highly regarded by the critics for landscapes he painted on the most famous, collectively made, Polish panoramic paintings form the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, such as Racławice (1893-1894), Captive Women (1894), Bem at Siedmiogrod (1896), The Calvary (1896) and, in 1910 The Battle of Grunwald. He was renowned as an oustanding landscape painter, and his illusion-creating landscapes were considered the best parts of the panorams. In 1897 the artist won the contest for wall painting in the St. Stanisław’s Chapel in St. Anthony’s Church in Padova. It was completed in 1900 and praised by Italian and Polish connoisseurs, which brought the painter dozens of orders for polychromy in churches and secular buildings in Poland and abroad. For his polychromy he became renowned as one of the best Polish fresco painters in the beginning of the 20th century. Among the best of Popiel’s works in this field are wall paintings in the St. Stanislaw’s Chapel at St. Anthony’s Basilica in Padova; in the Dutch Chapel in Padova Cathedral; in one the most beautiful courtyards of the Vatican Palace, Cortile San Damasco; in a chapel in Ponte di Brento, Parish Church in Aracella; polychromy for the Franciscan Church in Cracow; the polychromy in the parish church and Bernardine Church in Dukla, in the church and the cloister of the Carmelite Nuns in Przemyśl, in the St. Florian’s Church in Jeżyce in Poznań, and in St. Joseph’s Church in Lvov. Popiel also produced forty paintings for the iconostass of the Narodny House in Lvov, two wall paintings for the Tretiakov Palace in Moscow and paintings on the walls of the Municipal Theatre in Lvov. Besides these commissions, he made many oil paintings, including portraits, historical and biblical scenes, allegories, genre paintings and landscapes. Only two paintings on Siberian themes can be found in the rich and varied work of Popiel. One of them, Deportees, belongs to the Cracow Historical Museum; the second, Siberia, belongs to the artist’s family. The paintings are not dated, but closer examination indicates that they were made after 1905 or at the turn of 1912/1913 for a large exhibition commemorating the January Uprising, entitled The Year 1863, which was to be held in Lvov in September 1913. The paintings, though not completed and not up to par artistically, are worthy of notice for their iconographic value. It can be said that they are among the most beautiful and clear explanations of the Polish messianic philosophy to be found in Polish painting of the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.
Tadeusz Popiel died on February 22, 1913. He bequeathed abundant, eclectic work as a famous, skillful academic style painter, sensitive to the formal achievements of the impressionists and of Art Nouveau. Though popular and appreciated while alive, today he is almost forgotten.