First of all, we are very pleased to inform that Jerzy Huczkowski, Editor-in-Chief of our magazine, received the prestigious 2003 Patron of Culture Award at a ceremony held on June 29, 2004. The award was granted to Gazeta Antykwaryczna in the Sponsor category in recognition of its media sponsorship and advertisements for as well as publications on the exhibitions staged by the National Museum in Krakow in 2003. What makes this honour even more valuable for us is the fact that the present issue of Gazeta Antykwaryczna is the 100th in the history of this magazine.

The leading topic of the summer edition of Gazeta Antykwaryczna is portrait. The magazine brings an overview of the Polish market of portrait painting (for large extracts of the article see below); a story on Olga Boznańska, a great Polish portraitist of the turn of the 19th and 20th century; a review of the exhibition entitled Child In the 17th-19th Century Paintings from Polish Collections (the Wilanów Palace Museum, from June 4th through September 13th); a story on miniature portraits; and critical reviews of the Tamara de Lempicka monograph at London's Royal Academy, Ecce Homo. Works From the Collection of Deutsche Bank at the International Cultural Centre in Krakow (from June 10th to September 19th), and the Parisian show Me! Self-Portraits of the 20th Century. We have not forgotten portrait photography either: it is mentioned the texts on Jorge Lewinski's exhibition at the Royal Academy and a show of Bogdan Konopka's works which has just closed in Warsaw.

Also in this issue: a presentation of the painting of the Lviv artist Margit Reich-Sielska, photographs by Jakub Ciećkiewicz and Wojciech Wilczyk, and discovering America in Berlin: a review of the MOMA exhibition. The readers are encouraged to have a glimpse at Hutzul art, and encouraged to visit an unusual show of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art from the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum (National Museum in Gdansk, from August 8th to October 3rd), and to explore the world of silverware (the exhibition at the National Museum in Krakow runs till July 25th). We propose ferreting for attractive collectibles in the TriCity, Szczecin and Torun antique shops and galleries, and offer an extensive review of the 6th Polish Fair of Antiques and Contemporary Art that took place in May in Krakow. Last but not least, we are publishing recent auction results.

Tomasz Lewicki
To avoid an evil look. The Polish portrait market

The value of a portrait is in a large measure contingent on who the sitter was. The most precious are images of respected celebrities. Therefore, a portrait of king Jan III Sobieski will be four times as expensive as a portrait of similar artistic quality but depicting an unknown nobleman from the second half of the 18th century. However, while fascism is anathema and no reputable gallery would ever put up a portrait of the Fuehrer, the fashion for socialist memorabilia has stirred some interest in portraits of communist leaders: every now and then one can come across likenesses of Dzierżyński or Bierut at antique shops. Self-portraits are usually more expensive than other portraits. In a majority of cases their quality is higher than the artist's average work. An example is Zygmunt Waliszewski, who made a true effort only when painting from a mirror.
Prices of portraits of unknown persons depend mostly on the age and beauty of the sitter. The highest demand is for pictures of children and pretty young women, more for ladies than peasant women. Portraits of elderly people find no purchasers. Expressionist portraits of old men with parchment-like skin painted by Konrad Krzyżanowski are twice as cheap as his well-groomed effigies of Marshal Joseph Pilsudski. Also, buyers are hard to find for images of clerics. Army officers are moderately popular. Additionally, pictures where the sitter is positioned against a background of a landscape sell better than portraits in an interior or with a neutral backdrop. The presence of an animal such as horse or dog is an asset.
Moreover, not every epoch is equally appreciated. In terms of quantity, old Polish painting was dominated by sacral paintings and Sarmatian portraits, yet the crude bluntness in depicting facial features and the mediocre artistic quality of the latter genre make it difficult to sell, with prices oscillating around PLN 10,000, pictures of celebrities excepted. Equally low is the demand for coffin portraits as conjuring up dismal associations. The market never offers works by the most distinguished Polish portraitists of the 17th or 18th century, such as Marcin Kober, Bartłomiej Strobel, Herman Han, Szymon Bohuszewicz, Peter Danckers de Rij, Daniel Schulz, Michel Angelo Palloni, Andrzej Stech, Jerzy Eleuter Siemiginowski, Szymon Czechowicz, Łukasz Orłowski, Augustyn Mirys, Józef Faworski, Konstanty Aleksandrowicz and Marcello Baciarelli.
An old painting will always be worth more if it comes from a famous collection, which might have been the reason for the high prices fetched by the portraits from the collection of the Hapsburgs of Żywiec, which went under the hammer at Rempex, and from the Czartoryski collection auctioned last year at Altius.
In the 19th century, the array of artistic means of conveying the richness of human physiognomy was enhanced remarkably. Compared to those created in the times of Romanticism or later, old portraits seem very conventional. In Poland that period saw a host of great artists emerge. Active in the first half of the 19th century were Jan Rustem, Walenty Wańkowicz, Antoni Brodowski, Leon Kapliński, Wojciech Stattler, Henryk Rodakowski, Franciszek Pfanhauser and Józef Simmler, yet Simmler's portraits are the only ones that appear on the market from time to time. Made with the utmost precision and attention to costume details, compositionally well balanced and careful in rendering the texture of fabrics and objects in thje picture, his works reach prices up to PLN 150,000 these days.
A large number of outstanding portraitists were active in the second half of the 19th century, which was dominated by salon painting, now the cornerstone of the antique market. Known mostly as a painter of complicated historical canvases, Jan Matejko produced a range of portraits of aristocracy and wealthy burgers. Although this area of his art was treated by the artists as a mere source of income, his oeuvre earned him well-merited reputation of the greatest portraitist of his time. Prices for his works representing this genre may well be six-digit figures.
Works by other distinguished exponents of academism such as Leopold Horowitz, Artur Grottger, Maurycy Gottlieb, Władysław Bakałowicz, Kazimierz Mordasewicz, Jan Rosen, Jan Styka, Tadeusz Ajdukiewicz, Wojciech Kossak or Kazimierz Pochwalski can also be successfully sold provided the requirements outlined above are satisfied.
Today, clients' preferences lean towards works dating back to the turn of the 19th and 20th century, represented by some leading portraitists, among them Teodor Axentowicz, Julian Fałat, Konrad Krzyżanowski, Stanisław Lentz, Jacek Malczewski, Józef Mehoffer, Józef Pankiewicz, Kazimierz Stabrowski, Leon Wyczółkowski, Stanisław Wyspiański, Leopold Gottlieb and Olga Boznańska. The decorative, slender line of Art Nouveau, which was employed profusely by Axentowicz or Mehoffer to depict usually beautiful ladies from the upper class, has been invariably popular for years. More expensive than these two artists' pastels are Wyspiański's masterly works, which do not turn up as often on the market. Without abandoning the Art Nouveau stylisation, Wyspiański overshadows his contemporaries with his fascinating way of revealing human authenticity. Malczewski's numerous portraits are purchased willingly because the elaborately symbolic background is as important in them as the sitter's countenance.
In the 20th century the commemorative function of portrait was taken over by photography and artists who specialised in making portraits with the use of a traditional brush or crayon were not as many as before. The most eminent portraitists of the first half of the century such as Tade Styka, Tadeusz Pruszkowski or Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz successfully overcame the competition of the lens through distinctive stylisation which even today attracts buyers and ensures prices for their works in the region of PLN 50,000.
(For information on 2003 hammer prices of portraits by specific artists see pp. 12-13)