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Girl from Borshchovychi

Artur Grottger

Basic information

ID: Ж-891
Author: Artur Grottger
Name: Girl from Borshchovychi
Date of creation: 1856
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas cardboard oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 38 x 27

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: portraiture
Plot: Portrait
Provenance: Collection of Lviv City Gallery
Exposition: Lozinski Palace

Information about author

Author: Artur Grottger
Artist's lifetime: 1837–1867
Country: Austrian Empire
Biography: Artur Grottger was born in 1837 in the village of Otynevychi in the Lviv region (former Ottyniowice, Eastern Galicia). He studied at the Lviv School of Painting of Jan Maszkowski and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and Vienna (1852–1858). Artur Grottger is a leading representative of Polish Romanticism, as well as a painter, periodical illustrator, graphic artist, and watercolourist. He is the author of six patriotic art cycles regarding the January Uprising against the Russian occupation of Poland of 1863, portraits, and local history materials. Artur Grottger died after a severe illness in Amélie-les-Bains, France, in 1867. He was buried in the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv (field No.95).

Object description

On an olive background is a bust-length figure of a girl turned three quarters to the viewer's left. The portrayed girl is dressed in a light blue svyta (long outer garment) with dark blue wide lapels and a red patterned trim. From under the svyta, one can see a white shirt with a turn-down collar and a red ribbon. Around the girl's neck are ochre coral necklaces, and a wide wreath with red flowers and green leaves is on her head. The girl's gaze is confident and directed to the left. A young emotionless face is highlighted by light. The artist depicted the girl in a mid-nineteenth-century urban costume of Galicia. Artur Grottger repeatedly referred to the Ukrainian folk theme: several years later (in 1960) and even in the last year of his life, living in Paris. In this theme, the artist reflected the most sacred things – dreamy melodiousness and full of human warmth lifestyle, revealing in his paintings the world of romantic visions, ideologically concentrated and very close to the romantic poetry of that time.

Inscriptions

At the bottom left, there is a monogram-signature: "AG" (interlaced letters), on the right there is: "Barszczowice 15/10. 856"

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery