Death of Anhelli - a remembrance of the January Uprising
On the 156th anniversary of the outbreak of the January Uprising, we recall the painting Death of Anhelli by Polish symbolist Witold Pruszkowski (1846-1896).

Image Death of Anhelli
In the foreground, in an exile's sheepskin coat, a young man lies diagonally on the snow. A snow-white angel leans over him, veiling his face in a gesture of despair. All that can be seen around him is the vastness of Siberian whiteness illuminated by the aurora borealis, whose star shines coldly above the angel's head. This symbolism refers to Juliusz Słowacki's poem Anhelli, describing a foreboding vision of the fate of Polish exile. In the 1870s, this poem became topical and often quoted because of the fate of the January Uprising insurgents exiled to Siberia.

Pruszkowski's work was staged in Kraków in 1879, arousing widespread admiration:

"The whole country knew this painting, if not from the original, then from [...] a beautiful oleo-printed reproduction enclosed as a premium in the Warsaw Kłosy. A thing so fantastic, so impressive had probably never before been seen in the halls of the Krakow and Warsaw exhibitions. This Eloe formed of snow clouds, mists and fractures of light, this white snow reddened by the glow of the northern lights, this fire of clouds full of beauty and horror, were so new, so torn out of the realm of pure fantasy, that one looked at the painting as if it were an unusual, unexpected phenomenon". [K. Bartoszewicz, Witold Pruszkowski. (Silhouette), "Przegląd Poznański" 1895, no. 5, p. 57.]

The painting symbolising the fate of the Polish insurgents was in the collection of Felix Vishnevsky (1902-1978), the last president of the Moscow Art Society, who donated it, along with other works, to the Museum in Irkutsk. In this city, next to the neo-Gothic Polish Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is a recognisable vestige of the Polish Siberians.

The work, famous throughout Poland, thus symbolically shared the fate of many Polish exiles in distant Siberia and is probably also viewed today by their descendants...

1879

Witold Pruszkowski (malarz, rysownik)(preview)