Hollyhocks – Polish Autumn

Hollyhocks — Polish Autumn, painted around 1900 and held at the National Museum in Kraków, combines the tall, columnar forms of hollyhocks with the specific quality of autumn light in the Polish landscape. Hollyhocks were a common garden flower in Polish rural culture, planted against walls and fences throughout villages, and their late-summer and early-autumn blooming made them a subject inseparable from the particular color and light of that season. Stanisławski's attention to native Polish flora — wildflowers, garden plants, agricultural crops — was a consistent feature of his practice, finding the painterly potential in the ordinary vegetable life of his homeland.

The tall vertical forms of the hollyhocks create an unusual compositional dynamic in Stanisławski's otherwise horizontally dominated landscapes, their columns rising against the open autumn sky. His rendering of the flowers captures the specific loose, crinkled quality of hollyhock petals and their characteristically rich pinks and purples against the autumn-toned surroundings.