Jan Ciągliński

Jan Ciągliński was born in 1858 into a noble Polish family. Poland was then divided, and Warsaw was ruled by the Russian Empire. From 1876 to 1878 he studied medicine and natural sciences at the University of Warsaw while taking drawing lessons from the painter Wojciech Gerson. Art won out. From 1879 to 1885 he studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg.

After graduating he returned briefly to Poland, but a well-paid commission brought him back to St Petersburg, and he decided to stay. He spent the rest of his career in the Russian capital, while remaining closely tied to Poland. In 1894 he studied for a short time in Paris, where he saw French Impressionist painting at first hand.

Ciągliński became an important teacher. He lectured for the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, ran a private art school, and from 1902 taught at the Imperial Academy, where he was named an Academician in 1906 and a full professor in 1911. His students included Ivan Bilibin, Yury Annenkov, Pavel Filonov and Elena Guro. He was also one of the founding members of the World of Art (Mir iskusstva) group.

His contemporaries nicknamed him "frenzied Jan" because he painted so fast and so passionately. His canvases are full of bright, high-keyed colour and direct, broken brushwork, and his paintings are considered among the first examples of Impressionism in Russian art.

He was a keen traveller, and many of his best works are travel pictures made on trips around the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East. Ramallah near Jerusalem: From the Journey to Palestine (1901) and Corfu: From the Journey to Greece (1905) in our collection come from these journeys, full of sun-bleached walls, sea and southern light. He also painted the cool northern light at home. A River at the White Night (1908), Evening (1908) and Moonlight Evening (Mist) (1910) show the long, pale summer nights of St Petersburg, when the sun barely sets.

A talented amateur pianist, he also painted many portraits of musicians, including Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Anton Rubinstein.

Ciągliński died in St Petersburg in 1913. Although he was best known in Russia, he left his works to Poland in his will, and most of them were transferred there by 1922. Today they are held mainly by the National Museum in Warsaw and other Polish museums.