Zephyrin Cwiklinski, Homestead with sheep - "South"

oil, canvas, size 62 x 76 cm, signed date l. d. : "Z. Ćwikliński 919", on the frame a paper sticker with the printed number "471701 "and a handwritten inscription: "Ćwikliński Zefir/ title: South, oil, 4XII 1919".

Zefiryn Ćwikliński (1871-1930) was known as the painter of the Tatra Mountains. He graduated from gymnasium in Lviv, then studied philosophy for a year at the Franciscan University in Lviv, later, after moving to Krakow, in 1887-1889 he studied at the Krakow School of Fine Arts under Florian Cynk, Władysław Łuszczkiewicz, Feliks Szynalewski and Izydor Jabłoński. In 1893, he received a scholarship and continued his studies at the Vienna Academy under the historical painter and portraitist Christian Griepenkerl. There he engaged in historical, portrait and genre painting. Due to lack of money, he was forced to return to the country, where he took a position as a drawing teacher in Brody and Yaroslavl. As a result of political clashes with school authorities, he was dismissed from his job. In 1898 he traveled to Italy and Dalmatia, where he studied landscape painting for a year and a half. In 1904 he was a member of the "Group of Six" in Lviv. In 1908 he settled permanently in Zakopane, henceforth creating mainly landscapes and motifs of the Tatra Mountains - presented at exhibitions and popularized by published postcards. These postcards with reproductions of his paintings, whose frequent motifs included sheep grazing on mountain pastures, cemented Ćwikliński's fame as a painter of the Tatra Mountains.