Patrician woman resting in the shade of a tree, a coastal landscape in the background

Details

Ausstellung:
Wystawa Obrazów Henryka Siemiradzkiego, Towarzystwo Zachety Sztuk Pieknych w Królestwie Polskim (Ausstellung der Gemälde von Henryk Siemiradzki, Gesellschaft Zachety der Schönen Künste im Königreich Polen), Warschau 1903, Kat-Nr. 610.

Provenienz:
Dobiaschofsky, Bern, Auktion 109, 13.11.2009, Los 367;
Europäische Privatsammlung.

Description

Henryk Siemiradzki came from an old noble family and studied at the St Petersburg Academy of Art from 1864. In 1871 he travelled to Krakow and Munich, where he became a pupil of Carl Theodor von Piloty. The following year, after a stopover in Naples, he travelled on to Rome, where he settled permanently. For the salon painter Siemiradzki, classical antiquity represented an Arcadian, golden era of ideal beauty. He often painted historicising scenes embedded in southern landscapes, in which he demonstrated his mastery of rendering shimmering sunlight and vibrant colours.
The present picture, a sketch for a painting that is now lost, shows a Roman patrician woman with her entourage of servants, who, alighting from a golden sedan chair, is taking a break in the shade of a tree.