Dimensions: 138 x 79 cm
signed lower right: 'WKotarbiński'
Provenance
DESA Unicum Auction House, Warsaw, October 2013
private collection, Warsaw
Biography
Wilhelm Kotarbiński, Miłosz’s first cousin, was a painter and draftsman. He studied at the Drawing Class in Warsaw under Rafał Hadziewicz from 1867 to 1871, and from 1872 also at the Academy of St. Luke in Rome. After completing his studies, he opened his own studio in Rome, where he also taught drawing; among his students was Maria Baszkircew. He returned from Italy in 1888 and from then on lived mainly on his own estate, Kalsk (or Kulsk), in Belarus. From there, he made numerous trips to Kyiv, where he had a studio at the Praga Hotel. He participated in exhibitions organized by the Kyiv Art Society, and in 1893 he co-founded the Kyiv Painters’ Society. Together with Paweł Swiedomski, Mikhail Nesterov, and Mikhail Vrubel, he worked on the fresco decoration of St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in Kyiv (completed in 1894–95). He created decorative ceiling paintings and murals, including those in Mykola Tereshchenko’s home and Bohdan Khanenko’s palace in Kyiv, as well as in the salons of palaces in St. Petersburg and Moscow. He primarily painted compositions with biblical themes, as well as genre scenes inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity. He also created fantastical scenes of a symbolic nature.
