THE VILNIUS CLASSICISM

Elzbieta Charazinska

In selecting a subject for the exhibition marking the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Prof. Stanislaw Lorentz, we felt bound to refer to his interests and his passions. This time, however, the concept of the event, rather than comprising another presentation of Polish art from the Enlightenment period, an ever-present theme in the Professor’s work, provided for art which is closest to those times and which is firmly rooted in their tradition. Thus, we found ourselves thinking of Polish classicism. Given that this term is rather unequivocal and carries certain historical connotations, we decided to narrow down the temporal and geographic scope of the exhibition; our choice was the Vilnius district, the place where Prof. Stanislaw Lorentz commenced his work.
The Professor’s professional emotional bonds with Vilnius were not the only reason for our choice of this particular theme. As we scanned the catalogues of exhibitions dealing with different periods in the development of Polish art and reviewed the permanent exhibits of different museums, we found that art from and around the year 1800 is represented but marginally. The present event will constitute the largest display of art from that period in post-war Poland. The exhibition will be based primarily on the National Museum in Warsaw’s own collections and on those of the Lithuanian Art Museum in Vilnius; it will include 467 paintings, drawings, prints, and decorative items produced under the influence of Vilnius culture in the late 18th century, through to 1815.
The name of Vilnius is intended to serve not as an absolute point of reference but as a general signpost. The items on display have been executed by artists who, while associated with that city, lived and worked in various parts of the Polish Republic as it was before the partitions - the areas of Vilnius, Trotsk, Nowy Grod, Brest-Litovsk, Minsk… The Smuglewicz works on show include pieces executed in Warsaw and in Rome; there are also several works from Warsaw by Peszka. We will display Damel pieces produced during the artist’s exile to Siberia and his sojourn in Minsk as well as Oleszkiewicz woks executed in St. Petersburg.
The greatest perturbations were caused by the concept of classicism itself. If we were to strictly abide by the aesthetic categories subsumed into a system by Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz - conformity, balance, harmony, restraint, clarity and expressiveness, rational transparency, formal discipline, and a scale referring to the human figure - the exhibition would comprise but few items and, even among this number, not all would meet every single criterion. Accordingly, while we endeavored to keep these categories in mind as we chose the works to be displayed, we also had regard for the fact that artistic practice generally tends to depart from the theory which stands behind it.
As regards the time frame, we followed Lorentz and other accomplished researchers and adopted the cut-off years of 1760 and 1830, with a predominance of works executed at the beginning of the 19th century. The emergence, blooming, and fading of a style across a period of seventy years is nothing extraordinary in the history of art and, what’s more, similar time spans are actually something of a rule as far as provincial genres are concerned. In the Republic of Poland, these years were a special time, a time of greatness, heroism, and of tragedy which ended in the downfall of the state and the partitioning of its lands among the neighboring powers. Art and artists were there throughout the different tides of fortune and the changes which they brought, and they reacted to them in different ways for their works were not produced in some vacuum but, most of the time, were commissioned and addressed to a specific audience.
It should be recalled here that Polish art and its creators enjoyed very favorable conditions for development at the beginning of the Enlightenment, benefiting as they did from the auspices of King Stanislaw August. A remarkable blossoming of architecture, urban planning, gardening, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts was sustained until the end of his reign, supported by commissions from the more cultured aristocrats and the wealthy landowners throughout the Polish Republic. In the Vilnius district, the greatest contributions towards development of the arts were made by Prince Bishop Ignacy Massalski. It is a well-known fact that Stanislaw August cultivated a dream, one which unfortunately was not brought to fulfillment, of establishing an Academy of Fine Arts. The painting workshop of Bacciarelli was but a modest beginning of a serious institution for the education of young artists. Only in 1797, a short time before Stanislaw August died in exile, the first department of painting and drawing was opened at the University of the Former Capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, since become a provincial city of the Russian Empire - Vilnius. This was a major victory of Enlightenment ideas, as propagated by the reform-minded members of the Commission of National Education. The one-time recipient of a Stanislaw August scholarship for study in Rome, Franciszek Smuglewicz - “doctor of the liberated arts, public painting professor” - was invited to take up the post of lecturer at the new department. Smuglewicz, in turn, called upon another Warsaw artist, Jan Rustem, who was nominated to the post of research fellow in 1798. The chair of the department of sculpture, established in 1803-1804, was taken up by Andrzej Le Brun, a distinguished artist from the court of King Stanislaw August who was brought from St. Petersburg by Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, the curator of the University.
The history of the “fine crafts” at the University of Vilnius unfolded against a backdrop of momentous political events. Following the partitions of Poland, Lithuania was incorporated into the Russian Empire and, accordingly, subjected to its authoritarian laws. As regarded from Vilnius, the great hopes for regaining Polish independence at the side of Napoleon dissipated into evanescent illusions when confronted with the quotidian reality of life under the imperial yoke. The magnanimously liberal policies applied by Tsar Alexander to his new minions created a dangerous semblance of normality and encouraged complacent attitudes.
Amidst these historical upheavals, the continued operation of a University whose lectures were delivered in Polish and which had a freshly established department of fine arts was no mean feat not only as regards the development of artistic training, but also the survival and growth of Polish culture, especially of literature.
The role of pioneers, however, is almost always an ungrateful one, and the judgment of posterity is often unkind. The artistic heritage of what is referred to as the first Vilnius school tends to be regarded with a critical eye. Its indubitable achievement lies in stirring up general interest in artistic education through the talents of its pedagogues and the attractiveness of its courses, which drew young people not only from Vilnius itself but also from the surrounding provinces. Another important consequence of the existence of a higher-level, academic institution for artistic education in Vilnius comprised the training of a group of able drawing instructors whose unremitting work in provincial schools contributed to an increase in the education of subsequent generations. Those of them who found employment as private tutors in better to do households infused their charges with an interest in the arts and in aesthetics. Also worth dwelling upon is the increase, also among conservative circles, of the prestige of the University’s artist professors and of their students. It would be difficult to overestimate the part played by this group in shaping the artistic tasted of the Vilnius community and in generating interest in art created then, there, in that city.
The hecatomb of the last war with its unprecedented savagery unleashed against human beings as well as their cultural heritage and the shifting of state borders which followed it have had a significant impact on our image of artistic culture from the Vilnius sphere in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The artistic splendor of Lithuanian manor houses and of well-to-do Vilnius apartments has, for the most part, perished; what remains, kept in the collections of assorted museums or treasured as family heirlooms, is now brought together at our exhibition so as to remind the public, after more than 200 years, of the variety and the fascinating nature of early modern art from this part of the old Poland.
Did the form and the content of art created in what was once the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the threshold of the 19th century, following the demise of the Republic of Two Nations, measure up to the dreams of Stanislaw August, its last royal patron? Did the King’s message about the ancient virtues of simplicity and patriotic selflessness find a fitting expression in the art of the Vilnius classicism? The works assembled at our exhibition may provide some answers. Grouped in keeping with the academic hierarchy of subjects, they form seven thematic units in which paintings, drawings, and sculptures are augmented with decorative objects:

1. Ancient Themes and the Bible - works dealing with Old Testament themes, Greek and Roman mythology, and with ancient history;
2. Religious Painting - paintings dealing with New Testament themes and with the Apostoles, images of saints, allegories of the virtues from the Vilnius Cathedral, and liturgical ornaments;
3. Architectural Designs - designs for the erection or reconstruction of classicist buildings in the city of Vilnius including plans for the Town Hall and for the expanded Cathedral by Wawrzyniec Gucewicz;
4. History and Allegory - paintings, drawings, and prints dealing with the history of Poland, allegorical presentations;
5. The Portrait - paintings, sculptures, and miniatures depicting, among others, distinguished members of Vilnius’ cultural community, including professors from the University;
6. Freemasonry in Vilnius - paintings and prints dealing with the activities of lodges in the Vilnius area, portraits of their members, related items;
7. The Landscape and Genre Themes - paintings, watercolors, and drawings - mostly views of Vilnius and its environs, genre pieces dealing primarily with rural life.

Text from the booklet The Vilnius Classicism in the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.-Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie.-Warsaw.- 1999.

 

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