Stanisław Żukowski (1875-1944), son of Julian - Polish landscape painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. many passions, the most important of which were three - love of Poland, nature and art.

Stanislav Zhukovsky's works are held in museums in Moscow, St Petersburg and 69 museums in other Russian cities. Since 1947, the painter's works have been included in thematic group exhibitions, jubilee exhibitions devoted to him have been organised and their catalogues have been compiled. The artist's work has been the subject of one monograph, seven sketches (columns) and twelve articles in newspapers and magazines. His biography and reproductions of his works can be found in encyclopaedic publications and art dictionaries, in illustrated encyclopaedias of Russian art.

Initiatives and processes related to Zhukovsky's work, similar to those initiated in Russia, can also be observed in Belarus. Collections of his works are in the collections of the National Art Museum in Minsk and in museums in other Belarusian cities. In 1973, on the 100th anniversary of the painter's birth, a jubilee exhibition was organised, featuring his paintings from the museum resources and exhibitions of five European countries (including Poland). A catalogue was also prepared and published for the exhibition. Numerous publications in magazines and newspapers have been written about the artist's creative activity.

Russian critics and art historians regard Stanislav Zhukovsky

value his work as a continuator of the best traditions of Russian landscape painting (these terms appear in all publications devoted to him). The basis for such a statement is the fact that the artist lived on Russian territory from 1892 to 1923.

Belarusian as well and consider him their national artist, as evidenced by the following statement: "[...] for us the artist Stanislav Zhukovsky remains forever a Belarusian national genius, a true patriot and an inhabitant of the Motherland, which he celebrated with his immortal paintings". It should be noted that the painter was born into a Polish noble family. He spoke Polish, Russian and French, but did not know Belarusian and had never lived on the territory of present-day Belarus. Despite this, the Belarusian side believes that it is legitimate to claim that Zhukovsky and his creative legacy belong directly to Belarus. The basis for this claim is the fact of the 'liberation of the lands of western Belarus by the Red Army' in 1939 and the incorporation of the eastern lands of the Second Republic into the territory of the USSR. There is something ideologically and politically in common in this approach of both countries - the desire to nationalise the artist and his legacy.

In Ukraine, Zhukovsky's collection of 42 paintings was kept in thirteen art museums until Russia's aggression (as of 2014).

Stanislaw Zhukovsky's works are known in contemporary Poland only to a narrow circle of professionals. And although there are quite a few of his paintings in the collections of some of the most important museums (in Warsaw, Krakow, Toruń, Białystok, Lublin), no exhibitions of the artist are organised, and there is no writing about him.

Stanisław Żukowski was born on 13 May 1875 into a Polish noble family, in the estate of Stara Wola in Jędrychów (Grodno Governorate). His father Julian lost his nobility privileges for taking part in the January Uprising in 1863, and was therefore forced to live in his estate as a tenant. The future artist studied at the Classical Gymnasium in Warsaw, then graduated from the Vocational School in Bialystok, where he took his first drawing lessons from the artist and pedagogue S.N. Jużanin (1862-1933). Against his father's wishes, he left for Moscow, where he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

Stanislav Zhukovsky's first teacher in Moscow was Sergei Alekseevich Korovin (1858-1908), who taught there from 1888 and led a class in drawing, composition and perspective. In 1893-1894, the artist studied in the main class taught by S.A. Korowin and K.N. Gorski (1854-1943).

In 1895 Zhukovsky moved to the figural class under the teachers N.A. Kasatkin (1859-1930) and A.J. Archipov (1862-1930). In addition, on his own initiative, he attended the landscape and still life class of V.D. Polenov (1844-1927), who was not actually his teacher. In the academic years 1895/1896 and 1896/1897, Zhukovsky was a student in a class of drawing from nature under K.A. Sawicki (1844-1905) and L.O. Pasternak (1862-1945). In the last years of his education in Moscow, Zhukovsky benefited from the advice of I.I. Levitan (1860-1900). In his memoirs by Juliusz Sawicki, Zhukovsky explicitly notes: "[...] formally I was never his [Levitan's - I.S.] pupil. I never studied in his class. But I understood a great deal and learned a lot by studying his paintings with great interest. Only in this sense can I be called a disciple of Levitan".

After graduating, he was given the title of artist. His landscape 'Moonlight Night' (1899) was purchased by the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. His work evolved into Impressionism. He approached and realised his landscape work impressionistically, but did not transcend the division between the material, object environment and its dispersal into the realm of the ether. He separated his brushstrokes with pure colours, which he placed next to each other, directly on the canvas, without mixing them on the palette. This way of neighbouring paints allowed for colour combinations that created the impression of an environment of light and air, thanks to the impasto technique of applying paint (pastoso). The painter tried to evoke the effect of sunny or nocturnal lighting of nature, juxtaposing cold and warm colour ranges. For Żukowski, the harmony of his own nature with the surrounding nature was an inviolable value. He used a variety of techniques for working with paint: combining separate strokes, in pasto techniques with the traditional technique of uniform, cohesive paint, colour layering of corpuscular strokes as a method to create an environment of light and air.

From 1902 to 1903, Zhukovsky took part in the exhibitions of the Association "Mir Iskusstv" (St Petersburg). From 1903. Stanislav Zhukovsky belonged to the Tovariščestva Peredvižnuh Hudožestvennyh Vystavok (Moscow), and from 1904 to the Soyuz Russkih Hudożnikov (Moscow). In 1907, he was awarded the title of academician of landscape painting and began teaching. He founded a two-year art school, which he ran from 1907 to 1917. Among its graduates were the poet and painter V.V. Mayakovsky (1893-1930), the Polish artist Stefan Domaradzki (1897-1983), the graphic artist I.I. Nivinsky (1881-1933) and others.

Stanislav Zhukovsky visited Ukraine twice. From late October 1900 to April1901, Zhukovsky together with his wife A. Ignatieva-Zhukovskaya travelled around Ukraine. During this time he painted landscapes continuously. Works from this period include: "Cataracts of the Dnieper" (1900, private property of F. Podvigin, St. Petersburg, Russia), "The bank of the Dnieper at moonlight night" (1900, private property of N. Rogachevsky, Moscow, Russia), "Manor in the south of Russia" (1900, Taganrog Art Gallery, Russia). He spent a second time in Ukraine in 1903 during a trip to the Crimea.

Between 1908 and 1910, he travelled throughout central Russia. He visited Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, painted many paintings, including a series showing interiors, and took part in numerous exhibitions. In 1909, he was awarded the second prize of the A.I. Kuinde Society for his landscape 'Dyke' (1909, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, Russia).

Between 1909 and 1913, Zhukovsky participated in an international exhibition in Munich, where he was awarded a gold medal. He presented his paintings at general exhibitions in Italy (Ezpozione Internacionale di Roma, 1911), in Germany (Erste Russische Kunstausstellung, Berlin, 1922; International Exhibition of Hunting, Berlin, 1938), in the United States of America (The Russian Art. Exibition, Grand Central Palace, New York, 1924), in Canada (The Art Gallery of Toronto, Exibition of Works by Contemporary Russian Artists, Toronto, 1925), in France (Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1925) and in Denmark (Russisk Maleriudstilling, Kobenhavn, 1929).

Between 1916 and 1917 Żukowski created with great passion. His paintings are distinguished by a particular emotionality, a sense of the rhythm of contemporary life. He worked very intensively, he was invited to participate in major exhibitions, his name was on the pages of periodicals and magazines, his paintings were bought directly from exhibitions. The painter's artistic work was greatly influenced by his affair with a pupil of his art school - Zofia Pavlovna Kwasniecka. He married her in 1917. The couple lived on Gogolewski Boulevard in house number 25. In his memoirs, Juliusz Sawicki noted: "The considerable charm of Żukowski's flat was added by his wife, amazingly kind and beautiful - Zofia Pavlovna Kwasniecka. She was a talented artist. She painted landscapes and took part in exhibitions in Moscow and Warsaw. The years spent with her were among the best in the painter's life.

In 1917 Stanisław Żukowski became a member of the association "Izograf", which declared neutrality towards various social and revolutionary events. In 1919, the artist and his wife left Moscow for Vyatka in the north of Russia. There he worked in the local theatre as a painter-decorator and director. He created sketches of decorations for Stanisław Przybyszewski's plays Mother and Night. In addition, he painted landscapes and went hunting. In the first half of September 1920, the artist held his first solo exhibition there in the house of the merchant P.P. Kalbukov. An advertisement about this cultural event appeared in the newspaper Viatskaya Pravda. For provincial Vyatka, the exhibition was a huge success, as eight thousand people saw the exhibition within fifteen days!

In 1921. Zhukovsky returned to Moscow, where he set about organising his second solo exhibition in building No. 11 on Veliko Dimitrovskaya Street. He prepared it in a hurry. The catalogue and placards were prepared by the well-known Moscow art critics I.E. Hvojnik and I.K. Krajtor. The show took place from 23 October to 23 November 1921. The artist presented 74 paintings that he had created in the last four years (1917-1921). Among them were 54 landscapes, 5 works depicting architectural abudition (court themes), 2 paintings of interiors and 13 other painting compositions. The exhibition was a success and won the painter recognition among the Moscow public and fellow artists. It provided a panorama of the artist's work and was the result of his explorations and achievements.

At this time, Stanislav Zhukovsky's work was targeted by proletarian avant-garde criticism. The painter understood well what was happening in the new Soviet art. An ideological struggle against the decadent-formalists had begun, which was described as ''educational work with the creative intelligentsia'' .Already in the 1930s, it ended in the sending to camps and execution of multitudes of people of art and culture: "[...] the development of Soviet painting in the 1920s and 1930s was not smooth and peaceful. It was a struggle against all sorts of directions and views, alien to the forming art of socialist realism'.

In 1923 Żukowski and his wife returned to Poland. Researchers of the painter's life and work assessed his return to the family home in different ways. The artist's decision was met with a lack of understanding and a biased assessment by Soviet art critics. One of them, N.I. Stankiewicz, stated: "Under the influence of the moment, Zhukovsky made a wrong decision. In 1923, he left for Warsaw. He [...] broke away from his native roots, adapted with difficulty to a different ground, and created nothing significant'. Another Soviet art critic V.P. Lapshyn wrote similarly: "Everything [...] he created - is mostly just a continuation of what he did earlier in Russia".

Other sources referred to Stanislav Zhukovsky's return to Poland as 'emigration'. In Ukraine, his paintings were even presented as part of the exhibition 'Sweet Sadness', where works by 30 'emigrant' artists from the collections of Ukrainian collectors could also be seen. The curator of the exhibition, L. Kostiuk, intended to show 'the combination of two streams of image-making (native and foreign) in one key [...], to show the difficult fate of artists who were forced to leave their homeland due to various circumstances [...]. These are [...] Konstantin Wróblewski, Władysław Golymski, Stanisław Żukowski [...]'.

After returning to Poland, Żukowski travelled around the country. He was passionate about painting Polish landscapes and noble estates close to his heart, which reminded him of the happy years of his childhood and youth spent on his father's estate. The artist was warmly received among his colleagues in Warsaw. In 1923, he joined the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, an association of artists and art lovers. It was active mainly in Warsaw between 1860 and 1939, and Stefan Szyller (1857-1933) built the Society's house in the Neo-Baroque style. The institution popularised Polish art, helped artists, conducted publishing activities, and organised creative competitions, in which Żukowski participated and was repeatedly awarded diplomas and medals. The painter found his supporters in the Group of Warsaw Artists "Pro Arte", active in Warsaw from 1932 to 1939. It gathered painters who practised impressionist landscape painting. Among them were A. Augustynowicz (1865-1944), W. Kossak (1856-1942), J. Rapacki (1871-1929), H. Weyssenhoff (1859-1922).

From the chronicle of events published in the journal "Rocznik Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk na Śląsku", we learn that "[...] an exhibition of paintings by the artist Stanisław Żukowski took place in 1935 in Katowice, at the Savoj Hotel". One of the leaders of Katowice's cultural and social life was the Savoy Hotel, located at 6 Mariacka St. It was known for its luxury and owed its status to a number of amenities. The restaurant in the Savoy Hotel was the favourite place of Wojciech Korfanty, the national leader of Upper Silesia. He frequented it for meetings of the Christian Democracy Club and other organisations that supported him. As can be seen, the hotel was not only a place of relaxation and entertainment, but also an important political, social and cultural centre of Silesia. From a newspaper article, signed with the code name Dr. St. K., entitled "From exhibitions in Katowice. About Stanisław Żukowski, painter of forests and interiors", published in the newspaper "Polska Zachodnia", one can learn that "[...] Prof. Żukowski came to Katowice from the arts with several dozen canvases, among which forest landscapes from Polesia and the Eastern Borderlands and interiors of Polish manor houses predominate". The author of the article was certainly impressed by the painter's work. He marvelled at the variety of his ways of depicting, his innovation in depicting air and water surfaces using decorative techniques, the lyrical mood present in his paintings.

The beginning of the Second World War - 1 September 1939. - found Żukowski in Warsaw. In 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, he did not leave his hometown and experienced all the tragedy that befell the citizens of Warsaw. Many of the artist's works were destroyed at the time. After the defeat of the uprising, the Nazis transported the inhabitants to the German transit camp Dulag 121 Pruszków. Established on 6 August 1944 on the site of the former Railway Repair Plant, the camp functioned until 16 January 1945. During this period 390,000-410,000 people passed through it. Initially, Stanisław Żukowski was placed in hall 5 - the transition room where the initial selection of the displaced took place. He was then placed in hall 2, where the camp's infirmary, sick bay and a small infectious diseases hospital were located. Painter was 69 years old at the time, sick and unable to work. The German doctors did not treat the wounded and sick. He could not endure the harsh conditions o boze and died at the beginning of October 1944. He was buried in a common grave with other Nazi victims. On 1 October 2010 the "Dulag 121" Museum was officially opened to commemorate the martyrdom of the Warsaw inhabitants imprisoned in the camp.