Before the Hunt in Rytwiany

Before the Hunt in Rytwiany, painted in 1900 and in the National Museum in Warsaw, belongs to the long series of hunting scenes that occupied Julian Fałat throughout his career. Rytwiany in the Świętokrzyskie region was one of several aristocratic estates where Fałat participated in winter hunts that provided him with subjects. The Polish aristocratic hunt had a rich tradition — depicted in literature by Adam Mickiewicz and in visual art by several generations of painters — and Fałat's hunting paintings occupy a privileged position within that tradition. By 1900 he was Director of the School of Fine Arts in Kraków and at the peak of his fame, and his hunting compositions were among the most technically accomplished and formally ambitious works in Polish art of the period. The winter setting allowed him to deploy his celebrated technique for rendering snow in watercolour.

Snow is Fałat's greatest technical achievement — he renders its specific qualities of light absorption, shadow colour (violet-grey rather than black), and surface texture with a fluency unmatched among his contemporaries. Oil paint here allows him to build up the scene with greater tonal range than watercolour permits, while retaining the freshness of touch he had developed through watercolour discipline.