Signed l.d.: Peské.
On the reverse (in blue paint): CP | 831 [in frame]; below: Rueil; on the stretcher frame notes in pencil.
Jan Peské (Golta in Ukraine 1870 - La Mains 1949) - first studied at the School of Painting of Nikolai Murashka in Kiev, and then in 1886-1889 at the School of Fine Arts in Odessa. In 1890 he became a pupil of Wojciech Gerson in Warsaw. In 1891 he went to Paris, where he continued his studies at the Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. He settled there permanently, growing into both the Polish community in Paris - he was in contact with, among others, Maria Sklodowska-Clodowska. He also made friends, partly through the latter, with painters and printmakers such as Paul Signac, Paul Sérusier, Félix Fénéon, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Camille Pissarro. From 1894 he participated in the Salons: Independent, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Tuilerian, and in 1901 had his first solo exhibition at the editorial office of "La Revue Blanche." Participating intensively in the artistic life of Paris, he also kept in touch with his country, where he exhibited at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw (1892) and at the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Lviv (1900) and Krakow (1910), and participated in an exhibition of Polish art at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1921. He did a lot of plein-air work in the south of France - in Bormes, where he had a studio until 1926, and in Collioure, where he established a museum of modern French art (now named after him and with a collection of his works). The artist's paintings were shaped by the influence of the Post-Impressionists and Nabists, as well as Art Nouveau styling. He was keen on the subject of motherhood, and painted still lifes, genre scenes and landscapes of the south of France.
