Melancholia

In a 1 September 1894 letter to his wife, Maria, Malczewski lamented:

“The [Polish] Republic is quite safe, because it’s dead – it’s no longer of this world…It returns…from time to time, as a welcome apparition, yet with each generation this apparition fades a little more…[becoming] increasingly ethereal and elusive…”

Cited in Elizabeth Clegg, “Faux terrain: Discontinuous Space in the Early Work of Jacek Malczewski,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 53, no. 2 (1990): 206.

Similar Subjects by Other Artists

Albrecht Dürer, Melancholy, 1513-14 (engraving, numerous collections, including Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Edvard Munch, Melancholy, 1892 (The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo)