Piotr MICHAŁOWSKI (1800-1855), Studies of the gray horse / sketches of oxen and cows

watercolor on pencil underdrawing, paper; 43.5 x 29 cm (light passe-partout);
On the back sketches - cows and oxen;
on the back handwritten inscription: authentic painting / Piotr Michałowski / W-wa 20.II.98.
Above, another handwritten note about the painting;
Painting exhibited at monographic exhibition: "Piotr Michałowski 1800 - 1855: Exhibition of the artist's works on the bicentennial of his birth", National Museum in Krakow, Krakow 2000; part: "Horses without riders, harnesses, with grooms", here p. 363, cat. no. 401 - ill. in color
Bibl.: Maria Suchodolska, "Polskie malarstwo historyczne doby romantyzmu", in Przegląd Artystyczny, 1955, no. 5-6, p. 112.
Jerzy Sienkiewicz, "Piotr Michałowski," Warsaw 1964, ill. 73, 219, 220.

Piotr Michałowski was as much a painter as a draughtsman. The great number of sketches and drawing studies, as well as underpainting in watercolor, exceeds many times the oil works and watercolors having the character of completed compositions.
The two-sided work presented here is just such a study - on the obverse we see a study of the front part of a standing gray horse, whose head with neck is repeated in the lower part of the sheet, overlapping partly with a lighter sketch of the horse's legs. These are undoubtedly two studies of the same animal with noble proportions of the head, with the lower one being made more concrete with definite drawing lines and a stronger watercolor stain, emphasizing the anatomical shape by highlighting and modeling the shadows. The upper study of the head is drawn against the gray-blue background of the watercolor stain. The suggestiveness of this representation makes us have a kind of "portrait" of the animal.
The type of horse is one of those often "portrayed" by Piotr Michałowski.
A close analogy is the mount depicted in the sepia "Three Horsemen", reproduced in an article by M. Suchodolska written on the occasion of an exhibition from the Romantic era at the National Museum in Warsaw and later on the poster of a monographic exhibition by Michałowski in Warszawic and Poznań in 1956 organized by Prof. J. Sienkiewicz.
And since it is possible to speak here of the painter's depiction of the horse's individual characteristics, it is worthwhile to be tempted to find other images of the same mount among the artist's works. And so very close to the twice-drawn horse is the horse on which the artist's daughter Celina was portrayed in the oil painting "Amazon" in the Silesian collection, or the well-known by name "Obejan" from the watercolor in the National Museum in Cracow (J. Sienkiewicz, 1964, fig. 73, 220) and "Climbing Horse" (ibid., fig. 219).
The drawings on the back - cows and oxen - are also among the very typical ones in the work of Michałowski, a prominent animalist, who, when sending an official to the horse market, gave him a drawing "instruction"-a sketch in which he emphasized what features of the horse's conformation he should pay attention to when making a purchase.
The watercolor study of a horse on the obverse and the sketch on the reverse are remarkably characteristic and typical examples of the great Romantic's work.