Józef Brandt

Bolesław Szańkowski (1871/73-1953): Portrait of Józef Brandt, 1910. Oil on canvas, 162 x 112 cm, National Museum in Warsaw/Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Inv. No. MP 961

Muzeum cyfrowe / http://cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl

After studying painting in Munich from 1860 onwards, Józef Brandt (1841-1915), who called himself Josef von Brandt on account of his Polish aristocratic title, celebrated brilliant successes with large battle paintings recaling the 17th century Polish wars against the Tatars, the Turks and the Swedes. Smaller paintings on the same theme as well as genre pictures from Polish folk life proved highly popular amongst collectors in Germany, England and the USA. With the opening of his Munich studio in 1875, when he publicly exhibited a collection of Polish antiquities used as models for his paintings, he became the leading figure in the Polish artists' colony in Munich. His close connection to the Bavarian royal family and his great successes at international exhibitions earned him titles, decorations and medals in the 1880s/90s. In Poland he is still remembered for his school of painting on his estate at Oronsko, which he had acquired by marriage, and for his national-polish motifs.

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Art review. The Battle of Vienna 1683.

Oil painting by Joseph Brandt in Munich, in: Deutsche Kunst-Zeitung Die Dioskuren, Year 18, No. 10, Berlin 1873, page 78 (http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/dioskuren1873/0091), in German.

Art review. The Battle of Vienna 1683.

Fig. 1: Unknown: Portrait of Józef Brandt

Fig. 2: Władysław Szerner (1836-1915): Józef Brandt in his studio

Fig. 3: Władysław Szerner (1836-1915): The studio of Józef Brandt in Munich

Fig. 4: The studio of Josef v. Brandt

Fig. 5: Carl Teufel (1845-1912): The studio of Josef v. Brandt

Fig. 6: The March of the Lisowskis

Fig. 7: Jews leading Horses to the Market

Fig. 8: Polish Peasants' Horse and Cart

Fig. 9: The Battle of Chocim

Fig. 10: Grazing Horses

Fig. 11: Return from Vienna

Fig. 12: A Break in a Small Town

Fig. 13: At the Tavern. A Polish Village with Ulans

Fig. 14: Czarniecki in the Battle of Kolding

Fig. 15: Waiting for the Boat

Fig. 16: Cossack patrol around the campfire

Fig. 17: The Battle of Vienna

Fig. 18: Booty at the River

Fig. 19: Greeting the Steppe

Fig. 20: A Break in the Steppe

Fig. 21: Cossacks

Fig. 22: Horse Breeding in the Steppe

Fig. 23: Polish Horseman with his Horse in front of the Toll House

Fig. 24: Cossack Guard

Fig. 25: The Liberation of Prisoners

Fig. 26: Alarm

Fig. 27: Militia at the Ford

Fig. 28: Catching a Horse

Fig. 29: Zaporozhian Camp

Fig. 30: Zaporozhian Cossack

Fig. 31: March with War Booty. Return from Vienna

Fig. 32: Polish Cavalry Parade (Hussars)

Fig. 33: Sketch of Cossacks

Fig. 34: A Cossack waiting for the Boat

Fig. 35: Setting out for the Hunt

Fig. 36: Market in Białka

Fig. 37: Encounter on the bridge

Fig. 38: Polish Farming Cart on a Country Road

Fig. 39: Before the hunt

Fig. 40: ‘The Poles in Munich’

Fig. 41: Royal Ensign

Fig. 42: In Flight

Fig. 43: Encounter on the causeway

Fig. 44: Prayer in the steppe

Fig. 45: Sketch for the ‘Armenian Mother of God’

Fig. 46: Cossack Wedding

Fig. 47: Victorious Return

Fig. 48: The capture of a Caucasian chief

Fig. 49: Return of the Cossacks

Fig. 50: Departure of Jan III and Marysieńka Sobieski from Wilanów

Fig. 51: Marysieńka's departure from Wilanów

Fig. 52: Preparatory study for ‘Marysieńka's Departure from Wilanów’

Fig. 53: Fight for the banner

Fig. 54: The courtyard

Fig. 55: Horse and Cart trying to escape

Fig. 56: The Hunt

Fig. 57: Cossack on horseback

Fig. 58: Cossack watchman

Fig. 59: The horse trial

Fig. 60: Tatar riding through a River

Fig. 61: Stefan Czarniecki on Horseback

Fig. 62: Forager

Fig. 63: Trumpeter

Fig. 64: Jadwiga Golcz (1866-1936): Portrait of the painter Józef Brandt

Bolesław Szańkowski (1871/73-1953): Portrait of Józef Brandt, 1910. Oil on canvas, 162 x 112 cm, National Museum in Warsaw/Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Inv. No. MP 961

Muzeum cyfrowe / http://cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl

As a result of his artistic success, his social status and not least the opening of his splendid studio in Schwanthalerstraße, Brandt became the main focus of attraction in the Munich “Poland colony”.[51] By this I mean those Polish artists who emigrated to Munich from 1828 onwards (but above all since the January Uprising in 1863), to study at the Academy of Fine Arts and under private teachers in the city. Between 1863 and 1875, more than eighty Poles were admitted to the Munich Academy. Brandt proved to be not only sociable, but also hospitable and helpful to younger students arriving from Poland. Since he also had a talent for teaching, he soon established an unofficial painting school in his studio. For a time his students included Tadeusz Ajdukiewicz, Jan Chełmiński, Józef Chełmoński, Michał Gorstkin-Wywiórski, Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski and Franz Roubaud, a native of Odessa, who moved to Munich in 1877 from the drawing school there and later travelled to Caucasia and Uzbekistan. Brandt took special care of Szerner, who had also taken part in the January uprising and arrived in Munich completely impoverished in 1865. Indeed he even went so far as to put him up in his studio.

When young Polish painting students visited the Neue Pinakothek (i. e. the collection of contemporary paintings), they discovered with a touch of patriotism that paintings by three Polish artists, Brandt, Maksymilian Gierymski and Wierusz-Kowalski, were also displayed there. Marian Trzebiński, who matriculated in the Munich Academy in 1893, wrote the following in a letter: “As Poles, we were very pleased to see two paintings by Brandt, which also had Polish language signatures '‚z Warszawy‘ und ‚Monachium‘, not Munich, in a prominent place:. […] Such tolerance gave us an idea of the sensitivity and highly developed culture of the Bavarian people”.[52] The Neue Pinakothek probably purchased one of Brandt's pictures in 1885, the year he painted it. This was a one by two metre, large format painting entitled “Cossack horses in a Snowstorm. A second, smaller picture,"Defence", is undated and like the first, it bears the signature "Józef Brandt z Warszawy, Monachium" (English: from Warsaw, Munich).[53]

[51] Die Polenkolonie: Brandt, Gierymski, Chelminski, Kowalski, Kozakiewicz, in: Rosenberg 1887 (see further reading), page 47

[52] Ptaszyńska 2008 (see note 32), page XII

[53] Catalogue of the painting collection in the Royal New Pinakothek in Munich, München 1902, page 25 f.: “COSSACK HORSES IN A SNOW STORM”. A shepherd sits under a hooped cart, protected from the storm by a piece of canvas. He is observing the horses jostling in the distance. Three horses are attached to the cart, on one of which is a spitz. In the foreground in the snow is a pot being heated on the remains of a fire. Oil on canvas. Bottom right: Józef Brandt z Warszawy Monachium 1885. Height. 1.12 m Width. 2.05 m. DEFENCE. A farmstead is being defended by the cavalry. In the middle a peasant is holding the restless, now riderless, horses. Two people are firing on the enemy from the roof of a barn. Oil on canvas. Bottom right: Józef Brandt Monachium. z Warszawy. Height. 0.98 m Width. 1.65 m.“– A painting entitled “Defence of a Farmstead by Cavalrymen”, Oil on canvas, 98 x 165 cm, can be found in the Bavarian State Collection of Paintings in Munich (Hans F. Schweers, Gemälde in deutschen Museen, I, 1, München u.a. 1994, page 203). It was not possible to get information there.

Bolesław Szańkowski (1871/73-1953): Portrait of Józef Brandt, 1910. Oil on canvas, 162 x 112 cm, National Museum in Warsaw/Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Inv. No. MP 961

Muzeum cyfrowe / http://cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl

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Józef Brandt

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Art review. The Battle of Vienna 1683.

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