01 Work, The Art of War, Witold Pruszkowski's The death of Anhelli, with footnotes

Witold Pruszkowski

The death of Anhelli, c. 1879

Pastel/paper

55.7 x 34.3 cm

Private collection

Sold for  zł20,000 PLN in December 2014

Anhelli is a prose poem written by Polish Romantic-era poet and dramatist Juliusz Słowacki in 1837 and published the following year in Paris.

The poem was written in the spring of 1837 in an Armenian monastery known as Betcheszban (Resting Place of the Dead) in Ghazir, a town in the mountains of Lebanon. Słowacki wrote that he created the poem "full of those feelings and thoughts, which were freshly inspired in me by the Holy Land and a night spent by the tomb of Jesus".

The main plot of the work revolves around the journey through Siberia undertaken by the titular character, a youth named Anhelli, and his guide Shaman, leader of a Siberian tribe. Anhelli was chosen by Shaman from Polish exiles as the redeemer because of his "purity and sinlessness" and he was to be subjected to an initiation by taking part in a journey to see the suffering of the nation... More on Anhelli

Initially, Witold Pruszkowski (1846 - 1896) studied in Paris with Tadeusz Górecki. He completed his painting studies at the Munich Academy (1869 - 1872) and at the Krakow School of Fine Arts (1872-1876), where he was a student of Jan Matejko. He painted portraits, genre scenes, fairy-tale and fantasy paintings drawing on folk beliefs and tales, as well as symbolic compositions inspired by the romantic poetry of Słowacki, Krasiński and Mickiewicz. He is one of the most interesting Polish symbolist painters. His paintings were recalled in a large, monographic exhibition of his works organized in 1992 by the National Museum in Poznań and also exhibited in Warsaw and Kraków. More on Witold Pruszkowski

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