Księga

Abstrakt

The article discusses in detail Album malarstwa polskiego (Album of Polish Painting) published in 1913 by Michal Arct’s publishing house, which contains several dozen reproductions of paintings by the most outstanding Polish painters at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. The reproductions are accompanied by an extensive analysis of these works by Tadeusz Jaroszynski, a well-known critic and writer. They constitute an important contribution to the author’s research into the language of art criticism of that era. Album... is an excellent source allowing to study the criteria of evaluating the art of painting by a critic who still respects the 19th century criteria of this evaluation, and who is faced with the necessity of analysing new art, whose principles and rules he tries to understand with varying success. The conflict between the “old” and the “new”, so characteristic of the times of artistic breakthroughs, is shown in the article against a broad historical and social background of the years just before the outbreak of World War I, with particular emphasis on the role played by native publications popularising information about our art abroad during the period of political captivity of Poland. Album... was a part of the trend of the then “beautiful book” and “refined book”, as it was published in the Polish-French language version, with rich graphics and binding.