Author: Smokowski Wincenty , 1797 - 1876
1. Bathing
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 17,5x21,2 cm.
Signed (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).
2. Children and a beggar
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 18,5x21,5 cm
Signed (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).
3. Meeting with the mother
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions:22x18,2 cm.
4. Conversation
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 22x18,5 cm.
5. Grief
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 17,7x22,3 cm.
6. Mischievous children
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 21,7x18,8 cm.
Signed (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).
7. Sacrifice for beggar
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 20,6x17 cm.
8. Walking with children
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 18,5x21,5 cm.
9. Peasant talk
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 21,3x18,5 cm.
Signed (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).
10. Rest
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 21x18 cm.
11. A bedtime story
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 17,5x22 cm.
Signed (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).
12. The girl and the beggar
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 17,5x22,2 cm.
13. Meeting of nobles
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 21,3x18,5 cm.
14. Ladies' afternoon with children
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 21,3x18,5 cm.
15. Carriage trip
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 22x18,5 cm.
16. Wolf hunting
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 22x18,5 cm.
17. Domestic scene (Children and nannies)
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 21x17 cm.
Signed (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).
18. Mother and daughter
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 17,5x22 cm.
Signed (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).
19. Domestic scene (noble family)
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 22x18 cm.
Signed (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).
20. Presentation to the public
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 22x18,5 cm.
Signed (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).
21. Beggar
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 18x21,5 cm.
22. Peasants after fun
Material / technique: paper, ink, quills.
Dimensions: 17,5x21,5 cm.
Wincenty Smokowski (1797-1876) was one of the most prominent graduates of (and later, an instructor at) the Department of Drawing and Painting at Vilnius University (sometimes called the Vilnius Art School), which operated from 1797 to 1832. He studied drawing and painting with the famous Jan Rustem, whose adjunct (assistant) he became in 1829, as well as graphics with Joseph Saunders and sculpture with Kazimieras Jelskis. He also attended the Imperial Academy of Arts (sometimes called the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts). Although he later received a medical education, throughout his life he did not limit himself to the practice of medicine, but also actively engaged in creative activity and wrote on matters of art. He shared a long friendship with the writer Josef Ignacy Kraszewski, with whom he corresponded and consulted on questions of art and whose works he produced illustrations.
Smokowski devoted close attention to studies of nature, so he regarded a sketch to be the basis of a work of art. Not only his own statements, but a multitude of sketchbooks and albums of sketches as well as individual sheets held in the collections of Lithuanian and Polish archival institutions bear witness to this fact. In these sketches, we can see various layers of mid-19th-century society, although the artist created in his immediate social circle, for the most part, recording scenes from the life of the lesser nobility, family relationships, and everyday situations, ranging from the striking to the comical to the sad or even the dramatic. Moreover, he had a phenomenal visual memory, which served him well when searching for a more expressive gesture or a more lifelike composition.
The album composed of 22 sketches in Indian ink (some signed by the artist: Wincenty Smokowski fecit), supplements the substantial yet still insufficiently recognised artistic legacy of Wincenty Smokowski.
The precise dates on which the works were created are unknown, but they were most likely produced in the late period of the artist‘s career, that is, after 1858, while he was living at the wife‘s manor in Krikonys and Vilnius, and while visiting the manor in Paliesius which belonged to his wife‘s brothers. This is indicated by a drawing of a carriage with two ladies speeding across the hilly fields, passing by a well sweep. It is noteworthy that the two embracing, animatedly gesticulating men portrayed in one image are seen in another, very similar, yet not identical drawing by Smokowski, at the Lithuanian Art Museum (titled Linksmi draugai, „Cherful Friends“). In many of this album‘s works, children are the major actors. Smokowski liked to draw them in various situations, spending time with their parents or other children. As was often the case for this artist, only figures are portrayed, but sometimes the surroundings are also shown. There is an especially heart-warming drawing, in which we see an elderly woman sitting in an armchair in a cosy room, telling a story to a child lying on a sofa. The composition of a blind beggar with a child in a church calls to mind one of Smokowski’s painting with the same theme, only in the painting the figures are seen in a landscape. It may be that at least some of this album’s drawing were in fact sketches for paintings and historical compositions the artist was planning to produce. There is a remarkable, intriguing drawing, depicting a bear attacking a person in a park.
These several sheets from the 19th century everyday life of the lesser nobility, in which we see strangers yet the moments of their lives captured by the artists are instantly familiar to us ( don’t many of us cautiously dip our toes into the cold water of a lake in exactly the same way as Smokowki’s bather?), connect us with a bygone time, with a history that is not recorded in our textbooks, in which there is space for both the lesser nobility and beggars alike (Dr. Rūta Janonienė, Vilnius Academy of Arts).