Trakai Castle

Author: Kulesza Michał , 1799 - 1863

Created: 1860.

Material / technique: gouache, tempera.

Dimensions: 45 x 54 cm.

Signature: Michał Kulesza / mal z natury w 1860 r.  (in the bottom-left corner of the painting).

During his holidays, the artist travelled extensively, drawing and painting the historical sites of the Republic of the Two Nations. He also painted portraits, architectural monuments and noblemen's palaces, domestic genre compositions, historical and battle paintings, and theatre scenery. However, his contemporaries most appreciated his landscapes in oil, tempera or gouache, which most fully reflected the Romantic worldview - admiration for the nature of his native land and its historical and cultural monuments. In 1852, in order to disseminate his works more widely, the artist published a collection of lithographed landscapes, Teka Michała Kuleszy, in Paris. The second volume of the series of lithographs, planned for 1853, did not come out due to financial circumstances. Interestingly, this second folder also included a lithograph depicting the ruins of Trakai Castle.  The ruins of Trakai Island Castle were undoubtedly one of the most popular motifs in landscape painting. The site, associated with the era of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, became a symbol of lost freedom and greatness, and at the same time attracted artists with its visual diversity, the ever-changing perspectives from different vantage points, the opportunity to "play" with the variations of the harmony and contrasts of water, sky and land, and lighting effects. The landscape of Trakai was painted at the end of the 18th century by Franciszekas Smuglevičius, and later, in 1822, by Vincentas Smakauskas, who organised an artistic expedition to Trakai. The image of Trakai for the Vilnius Album was painted in 1846 by the Warsaw artist Kristijanas Breslaueris, commissioned by Jonas Kazimieras Vilčinskis, in 1847 the monument was immortalised in watercolour by Albertas Žametas, and in the middle of the 19th century, artists were competing over the best way of capturing the charm of this unique historical place. The image of Trakai Castle in private collections, which is discussed here, is not the first in Kuleša's oeuvre either. The famous writer and art lover Juzef Ignacy Kraševsky wrote in an article about Kulesha (Tygodnik Peterburgski, 1845, no. 43) that Kulesha had already painted the ruins of Trakai Island Castle in 1829. In 1845, Kulesha presented a pencil drawing of Trakai Castle to J. I. Kraševski. In his article about the artist, the writer described the drawing in an exclusively positive light, praising the chosen vantage point, the play of light and shadows, and the picturesque contrast between the clear water and the bleak ruins. According to him, Kuleša's paintings show the nature of his homeland in a shaded state, at once beautiful and sad, beautiful and terrible, beautiful and cheerful, but always beautiful and lovely. We have no knowledge of whether these earlier landscapes of Trakai have survived. In general, very little of Kuleša's original work is known. In 1875, Zygmunt Gloger wrote in Kłosy that several dozen portraits and landscapes painted by Kulesha were scattered in various Lithuanian estates, and that the artist's son, who lived in Petersburg, may have had some more, but there is no record of them.  Thus, this small landscape of Trakai, painted in gouache and/or tempera, is a great rarity. The signature indicates that the castle was painted from life in the summer of 1860 (it may be noted that the handwriting of the signature is similar to that of the signature on the 1826 drawing from the collections of the Lithuanian National Art Museum). Kuleša chose a similar point of view as Smuglevičius, Smakauskas and Breslaueris, but all of them differed in their composition and the mood conveyed. Kuleša's landscapes highlight the castle ruins most of all, the atmosphere surrounding the structures is powerfully conveyed, and the reflections of the structures in the shimmering water, created by the transparent light, are most striking. Like Breslauer, Kulesha devotes a large part of the painting to a lightly cloudy sky, but does not depict the shore in the foreground, so that in his work the optics are focused on the island, as if it were floating in the space between the sky and the reflection of the sky in the lake. The vision of a vanishing castle seems to lose its materiality and transform into a symbol of a sad and beautiful past. In terms of the nature of the painting, this landscape is close to M. Kuleša's landscape 'Vandens malūnas' (Water Mill), created in 1841 using a similar technique, which is preserved in the Manuscripts Section of the Vrublevskis Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences (F. 320-466) - the painting is very detailed, with fine brushstrokes, a little dry, but it creates an atmosphere of peace and harmony of nature. Interestingly, the letters accompanying the painting also contain information about the previous owners of the image of Kuleša's Trakai Castle. The inscriptions are written in Czech, which is difficult to read in some places, and therefore the exact translation of the inscriptions and the search for the persons mentioned require specialist advice and further research.  The typewritten note was left by the owner of the work, who remembered that the landscape belonged to his mother's family, who lived in Trakai, near Riga, Latvia (sic!). A handwritten note from the then owner of the work's mother, stating that she had heard memories of the 'castle on the water' from her parents, Joseph Moučals (?) and Olga Ivanovna Dolmatovskaya Moučalova, and that the landscape had previously been in the Dolmatovskis' home in Petrograd. This data reflects the trajectory of the landscape, treasured as a family heirloom, on its "journeys" from Trakai through St Petersburg (and possibly Latvia) to the Czech Republic. It is gratifying that after many years a rare late-period work by a famous landscape painter has returned to Lithuania (Dr (hp) Rūta Janonienė).