Wojciech KOSSAK (1856-1942), Carpathian Hell - Dolor et Caritas, [The Great War], 1915

Signed and dated p. d.: Wojciech Kossak / 1915;
Analogous composition reproduced in the album: Kazimierz Olszanski, Wojciech Kossak, Wroclaw - Warsaw - Krakow - Gdansk - Lodz; 1982, ill. 197.
Wojciech Kossak painted several versions of his own compositions in different formats.

Lit:

-) Kazimierz Olszański, "Wojciech Kossak", Wrocław-Warszawa-Kraków-Gdańsk-Łódź, Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich - Wydawnictwo 1976, p. 36, color il. XVII - here with title "Dolor et charitas - To the memory of the World War", 1915

-) K. Olszański, "Wojciech Kossak", 3rd edition, Wrocław - [...], 1982, p. 32, color il. 197 - here with the title "Carpathian Hell - In memory of the World War", 1915.

-) K. Olszanski, "Niepospolity ród Kossaków", Krakow - Wydawnictwo 'Kossakiana' - 1994, p. 209, color il. 464 - here with the title "Carpathian Hell - dolor et charitas, 1915.

" As I have already pointed out, mobilization surprised me in Zakopane. Today, at a distance of twenty years, when I recall those times, I have the impression that none of us even approximately realized what a monstrous cataclysm was approaching." (Wojciech Kossak "Memoirs", compiled by. Kazimierz Olszanski, Warsaw, PAX Publishing Institute, 1971, p. 280). In the painter's war memoirs there are dramatic accounts of the hunger prevailing in Lviv, the lack of access to water, the diseases afflicting army soldiers, the victims of the war calculated by Kossak at 12 million lives.

The painter's paintings referring to World War I are dominated by depictions of young men/legionaries, uhlans bidding farewell to their girlfriends, taking a patrol, scouts, portraits of generals, seemingly everyday activities of soldiers. However, there is no shortage of dramatic battle scenes ("Charge at Rokitna"), wounded and hungry brave boys and children captured in the paintings of the Lvov Eaglets.

Among the depictions, singled out by the author of a monograph on Wojciech Kossak, Kazimierz Olszanski, as a series of works related to the Great War, a composition with a vision/remembrance of war - "Carpathian Hell" stands out. A shot of a wounded legionnaire being bandaged by a female nurse in a domestic setting transforms into a memory from the front visible in the background of the painting.

The featured composition by Wojciech Kossak was popularized, among others, in the form of a postcard, printed while the war was still in progress (1917, see the collection of the National Library - ref. DŻS XII 8b/p.34/53.) and published by Kazimierz Olszański.

As Kazimierz Olszanski points out, the artist's participation in active military service should have been an excellent pretext for a battle painter to study art "in situ." Wojciech Kossak did not part with his palette in those difficult times, he was greatly impressed by the cruelty of war.

The artist received a call-up to the Austrian army, where, with the rank of rotamaster, he served as commander of a motor column. In 1915, during a vacation spent in Krakow, he met Kaiser Wilhelm II in front of the Jagiellonian Library, who soon offered him to paint a group portrait of his closest colleagues stationed in Pszczyna. Kossak approached the task with reserve and some reluctance due to the emperor's comrades and his disapproval of the treatment of Polish soldiers especially those from the Russian partition. In this situation, the artist presented only a sketch of the composition additionally signed "painted on command", the painting was not realized because the emperor did not like his idea, which Kossak reports "You know, these people are very similar, although this is only a sketch. But it may seem that we are the ones who set fire to this village and now we are cruising from there." The painting is referred to by aides as "die Flucht aus Polen" [Escape from Poland] (card 50r - "Memoirs of Wojciech Kossak," vol. 2, p. 52, typescript).

Kossak consistently refused to portray German military officers. The Kaiser's fate was shared by Warsaw Governor General Hans Hartwig von Beseler, who asked to be portrayed against the background of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. Another memoir by Wojciech Kossak of meetings with Wilhelm II in Pszczyna and a conversation with Ldendorff shows how difficult the situation was for both Polish soldiers and civilians, who, living in different partitions, were treated with extreme suspicion by both their own commanders and their opponents.

"From the moment war was declared, everyone from the Russian partition without distinction of sex or age, was for these shackled "schwarz-gelbers" a suspicious individual who had to be treated accordingly, that is, brutally and possibly even as a possible spy. (...) Poles from the Kingdom and from the partitioned provinces overnight became "Russians and as such suspicious." (Sheet 36r - "Memoirs of Wojciech Kossak," vol. 2, p. 42, typescript).

In 1917, Kossak asked to be released from the Austrian army so he could join the Polish Legions. He was refused, but was assigned to represent the Armee Oberkommando in Warsaw, about which he writes: "Warsaw was antipathetic at the time. Any uniform, understandably, was frowned upon, and in all clubs (...) forbidden. Into this Warsaw, so tuned, entered the Legions." (Card 53r - "Memoirs of Wojciech Kossak", vol. 2, p. 58, typescript). Thus, he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Soon after, the artist put on the Polish uniform for the first time.