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Country Idyll

Jan Styka

Basic information

ID: Ж-1574
Author: Jan Styka
Name: Country Idyll
Country: Italy
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas
Dimensions: 73 x 36.5 cm (height x width)

Additionally

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

Information about author

Author: Jan Styka
Author in the original: Jan Styka
Artist's lifetime: 1858–1925
Country: Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland, Italy, France
Biography: Jan Styka (8 April 1858, Lviv, Austrian Empire – 28 April 1925, Rome, Italy) – painter, poet and illustrator.
He received his primary education at Imperial-Royal Four-Class Real Gymnasium in Brody, where he first began to draw. In 1871, his family settled in Lviv. At Lviv Gymnasium near Bernardine Monastery, drawing was initially taught by Professor Godlewski, and after his death – by Karol Młodnicki, artist and friend of Artur Grottger. The young artist also visited workshops of sculptors Julian Markowski and Tadeusz Barącz, who saw him as a future sculptor.
In 1877, Jan Styka went to Vienna, where he continued his artistic education at Vienna Academy of Fine Arts under Christian Griepenkerl and Leopold Müller. Later, he travelled to Italy, where he familiarised himself with collections of classical painting. In Rome, he befriended prominent artist Henryk Siemiradzki. There, he also became fascinated by poetry of Torquato Tasso, which inspired him to create a number of canvases. After returning to Lviv, he went for an internship under Jan Matejko at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków. For some time, he worked in Paris, maintaining close ties with Polish cultural diaspora.
In 1889–1890, his own villa-house was built in Lviv by Ivan Levynskyi's company according to the design of the architect Julian Zachariewicz. In 1900, the artist moved to France. His Lviv villa was purchased in 1907 by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky (now home to Oleksa Novakivskyi Art and Memorial Museum). In 1910, Jan Styka settled in Italy, on the island of Capri.
The artist worked in various genres – he created monumental canvases on historical and battle themes, portraits, biblical scenes, as well as large-scale panoramas ("Racławice Panorama", 1894; "Golgotha", 1896, etc.).

Object description

The image of a rock on which a thin tree grows on the left is depicted against the background of the Italian landscape. A young man with a naked torso stands on top of a rock; he is wearing a hat, and his hands are raised to the face. A spotted black and white dog is shown next to him. In the lower right corner of the painting there is a young girl who is leaning her head on her left hand while her elbow is placed on a large stone. She is dressed in a red tunic and a white blouse. To the left of the rock there is a road behind which there are white brick houses; the mountains are visible in the distance on the horizon.

Inscriptions

At the bottom right there is an author's inscription "J. Styka/Roma 882".

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Country Idyll

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