EN
Polish artists living outside the country tended to establish informal groups of friends. They would share studios, spend time together, as well as follow closely and amicably each other’s progress, even from afar. Life vicissitudes of Józef Chełmoński and Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski brought them together on several occasions. They both studied at Warsaw Drawing Class; they were both students of Wojciech Gerson’s; the two travelled to Munich to improve their painting techniques; they also met in Paris. Wierusz-Kowalski intently followed the oeuvre of his successful colleague, which can be best testified to by certain analogies in their works. The artists would adopt each other’s motifs, such as wolf attacks, ploughing, a girl resting in the meadow. The paintings usually have their Munich (German) prototype, yet the Polish painters, Chełmoński and Wierusz-Kowalski included, used to set the scenes in Polish landscape, thus turning them into thoroughly native. They composed paintings bearing in mind the sensitivity, artistic refinement, and expectations of his public. While remaining within the category of ‘native’ and ‘local’ art, neither of the painters became involved in the dialogue with their contemporary art which was penetrating new areas of formal and ideological search. The works of Chełmoński and Wierusz-Kowalski exemplified the native cultural code. Their genre and landscape paintings fitted patriotic functions of art, while enhancing self-identification of the artists as well as that of their public.