Many of you are probably asking yourselves what a work of art has in common with the Aviation Museum. Why has a technical museum acquired a painting? After all, there are many museums in Poland with an artistic profile where a painting would fit the collections being gathered. The answer to all these questions is complex and requires some reflection.
Artistic souls draw inspiration from many areas of life and science. The most striking example is Leonardo da Vinci, who was proficient in botany, zoology, architecture, as well as engineering. He designed many flying machines. Another example of an artist with a passion for technology, from our own homeland, is Jan Wnek. A sculptor who, on 19 May 1866, from the church tower in Odporyszow, reportedly performed a demonstration flight. Four years before Wnek’s flight, Czeslaw Tanski was born in the village of Pieczyska.
Czeslaw Tanski, a painter, graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg, student of Wojciech Gerson and Aleksander Kaminski, and scholarship holder of the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. He mainly painted battle scenes, genre scenes, and horse racing scenes. However, the artist’s main passion became aviation. He built successful rubber-powered flying models, and having heard news of Otto Lilienthal’s experiments, in 1895 he built his own glider, which he called the Lotnia (Hang glider). In 1909, he designed a monoplane called Latka, and then began its construction in the hangars of the Warsaw Aviation Society Awiata. The aircraft had a three-cylinder engine of 25 hp, flexible, twisting wingtips and horizontal stabiliser tips that served as control surfaces. It was completed in 1911, but due to its excessive weight and weak engine, it did not leave the ground.
Cab Rides (1903), a watercolour on paper, shows in the foreground a horse-drawn cab pulled by a single bay horse. The strong compositional focal point is the coachman, dressed in blue, sitting on the box seat in the centre of the painting. In the background, more cabs, trees and a street lamp are visible. Tanski, despite his interest in new technologies and innovative designs, remained relatively conservative and straightforward in his painting, even though he was active during the period when modern avant-garde movements were emerging. Cab Rides is a painting representative of his work, both in terms of subject matter and style. The horses are exceptionally skilfully painted, with great attention to detail and knowledge of animal anatomy. It is worth mentioning here that Tanski maintained close contacts with the Janow Podlaski horse stud. Although the painting’s subject remains very classical, the way light and composition are rendered brings Impressionism to mind, suggesting that Tanski, despite the absence of radical artistic solutions, did not remain indifferent to his European experiences.
The painting Cab Rides is presented at the permanent exhibition With the Wind and Against the Wind — Civil Aviation in Hangar No. 5.
