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Rural Funeral

Seweryn Bieszczad

Basic information

ID: Ж-565
Author: Seweryn Bieszczad
Name: Rural Funeral
Date of creation: 1880
Country: Poland
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions: 17.5 x 28.3 cm (height x width)

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: genre art
Provenance: Collection of Boleslaw Orzechowicz

Information about author

Author: Seweryn Bieszczad
Artist's lifetime: 1852–1923
Country: Poland
Biography: Seweryn Bieszczad was a Polish artist and a representative of the Realist movement. The author of landscapes, genre paintings, and portraits. A talented watercolourist. He was born on 18 November 1852 in the town of Jaslo into the family of an artist. Between 1868 and 1876, he studied at the Krakow School of Arts under Wladyslaw Luszkiewicz and Jan Matejko. He continued his studies at the Munich Academy of Arts under the guidance of A. Wagner. He trained in Dresden as the Vienna Academy scholarship holder. Since 1891, he lived and worked in Korosno, where he created most of his works, mainly landscapes and panoramas of the city and its surroundings.

Object description

The "Rural Funeral" painting is paired with the work "To the Cross", depicting respectively the beginning and end of a person's life. This work depicts the final farewell of loved ones to the deceased. At the head of the funeral procession, a coffin cross is carried with a khorugv fluttering in the wind, as black as the silhouettes of crows in the sky. On the sled, which is being pulled with difficulty by a bay horse, rests a plain coffin. The older man with a long white beard, supported by a young lad, leaned over it. A few poorly dressed people are standing nearby. The tragedy of the scene is accentuated by nature itself. Twilight of the short winter day falls quickly; the leaden sky, grey snow, and black, bare tree branches seem to envelop everything around in sadness.

Inscriptions

In the lower right corner, the artist's signature and date: "Bieszczad Seweryn 1880".

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Rural Funeral

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