Auction 78 / Lot 5047

Signed and dated lower right 'M G- Wywiorski Monachium 87'. Frame. Provenance: Private property North Rhine-Westphalia. Mounted Cossacks and peasants on horse-drawn carts travel along a muddy path in this large-scale depiction. The last snow is still lying in the barren landscape. The dynamic composition shows Michael Wywiorski-Gorstkin to be an excellent academic and connoisseur of anatomy. Horses and figures are presented in varied movement. The composition is characterised by great liveliness. The artist depicts the scene with extraordinary precision and detail. The chosen perspective skilfully creates an energetic pictorial impression, as if the travellers were only just passing the viewer in the next moment. The German-Polish artist Michael Wywiorski-Gorstkin studied at the Munich Academy and later with Josef von Brandt and Alfred von Wierusz-Kowalski. The latter inspired the latter's landscape and genre paintings both motivically and stylistically. Especially his depictions of sleigh rides and carriage rides reveal the teacher's example. The influence of Franz Roubaud on his artistic work is also clearly noticeable. At the end of the 1880s, Vyviorsky-Gorstkin travelled to Tbilisi and the Caucasus, where he found inspiration for his depictions of Circassians, Tatars and Cossacks.