Pentecost Holiday Fair near Cracow, 1906

  • Witold Wojtkiewicz, Polish, 1879-1909

Tempera and/or oil on canvas

  • Unframed: 38 inches × 39 1/2 inches × 7/8 inches (96.5 × 100.3 × 2.2 cm)
  • 38 3/4 × 40 1/4 × 1 1/2 inches (98.4 × 102.2 × 3.8 cm)

Founders Society Purchase, Friends of Polish Art Fund

1988.63

Wojtkiewicz created visions of an unsettling world in which human beings are often reduced to puppets, acting out strange but somehow familiar parts. This painting shows an old couple at a holiday fair, a popular entertainment for country folk and city dwellers alike in the late nineteenth century.

Signed, lower right: Witold Wojtkiewicz | Kraków 1906

Marked, two paper exhibition labels, damaged, overlapping: Adres... | dzielo Phingsten in Bielany bei Krakau | ....tempera cena 1000 | Towarzystwo Przyjacjól Sztuk Pieknych w K [rakowie]

ca. 1907, collection of André Gide (Paris, France)

by descent to his daughter, Catherine Gide

by descent, the son of Catherine Gide

Jean-Pierre Bosc (Paris, France)

(Alain Clairet, Paris, France)

1988-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Exposition Witold Wojtkiewicz. Exh. cat., Galerie E. Druet. Paris, 1907, n.p., cat. 1 [preface by André Gide]. Pieńkowski, S. "Witold Wojtkiewicz," KtosY: Miesięcznik illustrowany poświęcony szutkom plastycznym, teatrowi, muzyce i literaturze, 1, 6 (May 1914): (ill. on cover). Domańska, B. Witold Wojtkiewicz 1879-1909. Exh. cat., Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie. Krakow, 1989, vol. 2, no. 29, p. 47 [as Carrousel and in unknown location]. Ficowski, J. W sierocińcu świata: Rzecz o Witoldzie Wojtkiewiczu. Warsaw, 1993, p. 71, (ill. on the cover). Ficowski, J. Witold Wojtkiewicz. Łowicz, 1996, p. 52, 201 (ill.). Bulletin of the DIA 65, no. 2-3 (1989): p. 15, (fig. 10, repr.). Grabska , E. “Lʼarrière-garde de lʼavant-garde: la colonie artistique polonaise à Paris 1905-1914,” in Gérard Monnier and José Vovelle, eds., Un art sans frontiers: L’internationalisation des arts en Europe (1900-1950). Paris, 1995, pp. 79-93 (ill.). Juszczak, W. Wojtkiewicz i nowa sztuka. Warsaw, 1965; Kraków, 2000, p. 112 (ill.). Kossowska, I. “Akwarele, pastele, rysunki, litografie,” in Elżbieta Charazińska et al., Ceremonie: Witold Wojtkiewicz 1879–1909. Exh. cat., Muzeum Narodowe. Warsaw, 2004, p. 113, under no. 37. Charazinska, E., et al. Witold Wojtkiewicz 1879-1909: Une fable polonaise. Exh. cat., Musée de Grenoble. Grenoble, 2004, p. 37 [as Carrousel; not in exhibition]. Chudzicka, D. “Reconsidering Witold Wojtkiewicz’s Pentecost Holiday Fair near Kraków,” Bulletin of the DIA 95, no. 1 (2021): pp. 40-51; (ill. fig. 1), p. 40; (details figs. 7-9) p. 45; (fig. 10), p. 46 [label from back].

Witold Wojtkiewicz, Pentecost Holiday Fair near Cracow, 1906, tempera and/or oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Friends of Polish Art Fund, 1988.63.