Józef Mehoffer
In front of us is one of the most exquisite and mysterious works in the history of Polish painting. It was made during a very significant period in Mehoffer’s life – when he had already found success as an artist and was happily married. Throughout his output, the artist strove to reflect the charm of his wife Jadwiga Janakowska, whom he had met in Paris and married five years later, painting refined portraits of her in fanciful costumes. Mehoffer produced The Strange Garden while away on a family holiday in the village of Siedlec. In the painting, he captures the very apogee of familial happiness; a nude fair-haired young boy holding a bunch of alcea blossoms frolics in a bright orchard. Withdrawn somewhat into the shade, the boy’s beautiful smiling mother wearing a sapphire gown looks on close by while a massive sapphire dragonfly hovers over them with its golden latticework wings outstretched in a protective embrace.
An excerpt from a letter the artist wrote to his wife helps us to interpret the symbolic outsize insect: “Now, you are to me practically synonymous with the colour of sapphire, and holding you close, though across such a distance, I immerse myself in that colour.” Perhaps, this suggests that the dragonfly keeping watch over the family, which Mehoffer had identified as a symbol for the sun, is actually the artist himself?
The path into the depths of the orchard is lined with a seemingly unending garland of flowers, hung in the apple tree canopies by the boy’s nursemaid dressed in a traditional folk costume. Sunlight drenches the entire garden, illuminating the lush vegetation in the foreground, which has been rendered with the precision of a miniature painting. Several years before painting the picture, Mehoffer had written in his journal: “I can’t say that I know what to paint, the idea is a general one: an idea of life, delight, pleasure, joy, light, sunshine and warmth.” It would be hard to imagine a better interpretation of these notions.
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