The 19th century was the era of historicism, an intellectual and artistic current that significantly formed national identities. In the shadow of technological development, the dynamic progress of civilisation, the incessant rev-olutionary turmoil, modern societies were taking shape. The need to mark one’s national distinctiveness, especially in countries without sovereignty, was particularly strong. In the face of the anti-Polish policy of the par-titioners, a special role emerged for art, understood as a “patriotic mission”. It was seen as having the potential to foster the consolidation of all forces in the struggle for the existence and preservation of cultural independence.

It is in such an atmosphere that Jan Matejko conducts a national examination of conscience. His Polishness is a state of mind. You cannot escape it, you have to face it. In the canon of patriotic thought that the painter has inculcated, he tries to move consciously, with full focus. He points out national flaws, exposes betrayals, and deals with a difficult history. 

His work hardly touches on contemporary events –  Poland, Misery 1863, and Poland – The Year 1863 
(The Forging of Poland) are just a few sketches and one canvas. He does not avoid sentimental and pathetic ges-tures in them, but he finds the present day too painful  to draw from.

In 1861, after the demonstrations in Warsaw that had been bloodily suppressed, and influenced by photographs of the fallen sent by the musician Feliks Gebethner, he sketches on canvas a woman with a chalice of the victims’ blood rising to the sky. In 1863, he donates five hundred Austro-Hungarian guldens for the purposes of the uprising, a substantial amount for his earnings. He will supply weapons to Langiewicz’s troops. 
In frail health, he fights with a paintbrush. After the uprising, he changes the tone of his paintings. By portraying the bygone splendour of the Republic, as well as the glory of its arms, he fortifies hearts and minds. He paints to strengthen the national spirit. 

Some of his paintings are political manifestos. The Union of Lublin, painted as a response to the brutal post- uprising repression in Lithuania, is the artist’s protest against the recognition of Lithuanian lands as indigenously Russian. The Battle of Grunwald and The Prussian Homage were a reaction to increasing Germanisation in the Prussian partition. 

The pessimistic tone echoes again in his late works. The unkept Oaths of Jan Kazimierz are almost a warning to future generations.An unprecedented event was the presentation of the sceptre – a symbol of the assumption of spiritual power over the nation – by the mayor of Cracow to Jan Matejko in 1878. The forty-year-old Matejko responded at the time: “In Polish art today, my nation does not recognise their Spirit King. With your sceptre you allow me to  anticipate an imminent historical change. A rebirth! [”1]

At the same time, Matejko ranks among the most em-inent painters of Europe of his time. As director of the School of Fine Arts in Cracow, though not without fear of the offensive of modernity and foreign, sterile fashions, he educates a new generation of painters. After all, he is a peer of Cezanne’s and modernity is right on his doorstep. However, the interplay of colours, construction, and formal problems do not capture his imagination. He is interested in the idea. For a moment, he even tries to make the paintings shine like stained glass, but cries out with resignation: “Damn it, ochre and ochre! [”2]

Historical painting usually confines itself to dressing an anecdote, sometimes sentimental or dramatic, in historical costume. The painters show off their erudition and technical proficiency, but do not go beyond convention. Rarely does one attempt his own analysis and interpretation. Against this background, Matejko’s work is unique. He is an artist growing out of the spirit of Romanticism, brought up on great Romantic literature (Mickiewicz, Słowacki) and painting (Delacroix). He delves into historical literature. He wants to become an archaeologist and historiosophist. He is preoccupied with history conceived fatalistically in the context of partitions. Each theme addressed is subjected to his own interpretation. For Matejko, painting is a “weapon in hand”, an “examination of conscience”. Some of his work is of a recriminatory and accusatory nature, often causing a stir in public opinion.
Matejko’s figures are characterised by insightful psychological analysis. The diversity of types and characters is striking. The facial features are expressive, the faces serious, at times tragic, burning with elation, with wild ecstatic eyes. The models are usually family members or friends. The expressive power of the characters is matched by an incredible historical intuition and a great knowledge and familiarity with historical realities. Matejko is able to recreate the atmosphere of past eras, and at the same time the characters of the various participants. He studies costumes, architecture, objects, goes to antique shops and collects buttons. He creates his “Treasury” – from countless prints, drawing notes, watercolours, fabric fragments, and so on. He skilfully combines historical and portrait painting, which is the strength of his work and evokes the viewer’s emotions.

Jan Matejko left a rich legacy of several thousand drawings. He had his sketchbook with him at all times. While the artist was still at the Munich Academy, 
a number of pencil works were created with the character of a design. Some of these were realised  later, including: Stańczyk, Poisoning of Queen Bona, John III Sobieski in Częstochowa, The Battle of Grunwald, Stefan Batory at Pskov.

The sketch is, at its core, a very intimate medium. It often serves as a snapshot of a moment. It is created  “on the spot”, under the influence of a creative vision. It is a testament to absolute sincerity and inner truth, which guarantee artistic value. The artist’s individuality is most fully revealed in sketches. Stanisław Witkiewicz regarded drawing as a testimony to a state of inspiration, the purest manifestation of the artist’s talent and personality. “[It is] a crystallised moment of conscious-ness, a materialisation of a state of the soul that does not return a second time. [”3]

This presentation of Matejko’s drawings, from the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw, reveals an unknown face of the artist using a quick, shorthand drawing, only occasionally refined, but always dynamic and bold. The restlessness of form in the sketch is particularly interesting. The temperament, determination, and kind of talent of the artist are revealed here. The drawings often reflect the artist’s state of mind, his admiration, infatuation with a pose, a physiognomy, a grimace. 

Matejko’s drawings are never “forced”. Here we observe not only drawn overall compositions, but also “small sections”, details, the most perfect and seductive ones in the artist’s oeuvre. 

The works are not homogeneous. In some of them, the artist operates only with line – dry and decisive, the late ones – with soft lines, more refined, are characterised by a valorous tremor and liveliness. They, too, have more of a painting feel. They seem almost baroque in detail. 

In many sketches, Matejko introduces large groups. The figures are crowded, set in one plane in a space that is sometimes too flat. The crowd ripples, bursting the frame of the composition with its dynamism. 

In his works, the artist strives for the greatest strength and yet subtlety of expression, although many of his sketches remain illegible due to the tangle of lines depicting the crowding of human masses. There is no clumsiness or incorrectness to be seen here. The proportions are captured, the line is sure, and the composition – even when the artist moves certain blocks and makes corrections – remains interesting. Matejko was accused that his short-sightedness and lack of studio space resulted in crowded, illegible layouts. The sketches prove that this is not the result of deficits, but an original yet modern artistic idea. 

1  J. Matejko. Wypisy biograficzne, ed. and fn. J. Gintel, introd. J. Bogucki, Cracow 1955, p. 264. 
2  J. Woźniakowski, Co się dzieje ze sztuką, Warsaw 1974, p. 115.
3  S. Witkiewicz, Juliusz Kossak, Warsaw 1912, p. 50.

Author: Katarzyna Haber, curator of the exhibition
Organizers: National Center for Culture, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage