About this lot

Description

Portrait traditionally believed to be of a First Lieutenant Podgórski, half length, in uniform before a battlefield signed lower right 'Barbacki B.' oil on canvas 48 x 35.5cm

Footnote: Provenance: By descent from the sitter, believed to be the great-grandfather of the present owner The sitter appears to be wearing a Polish variant of the 'blue horizon' uniform, dating the present painting around the period of the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921). A manuscript, now in the Muzeum Okręgowe w Nowym Sączu, in which the artist lists his sitters, does not however refer to a portrait of a Lieutenant Podgórski of this sitter's age, circa 1920. It does however include a painting of an older, bearded man, painted in 1923, which at that time belonged to Michał Podgórski, then an office worker in Krakow. It is thus quite feasible that Barbacki may well have painted another member of the Podgórski family, but failed to list it in his manuscript. We are grateful to Ms Edyta Ross-Pazdyk from Muzeum Okręgowe w Nowym Sączu for checking the Barbacki records and for her help with this catalogue entry.

Condition report: Oil on canvas which appears to be unlined. The canvas is in plane but the tension is slightly slack resulting in minor stretcher bar marks where the canvas rests on the wooden stretcher behind. The paint layer is in a good condition overall. Around the sitter’s hat are some slightly raised cracks, these are localised to this area. The varnish has been locally applied to certain areas of the painting, probably by the artist himself. The appearance of the painting is good overall. The painting is in contact with the glass in the frame.

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