Stanislawa de Karlowska
Encyclopedia
Camden Town Group
The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists active 1911-1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.-History:...
painter Robert Bevan
Robert Bevan
Robert Polhill Bevan was an English painter, draughtsman and lithographer. He was a founding member of the Camden Town Group, the London Group, and the Cumberland Market Group.-Early life:...
.
Life and work
Stanisława de Karłowska was the daughter of Aleksander de Karłowski and Paulina z Tuchołków. The Karłowskis were descended from the Polish nobility (szlachtaSzlachta
The szlachta was a legally privileged noble class with origins in the Kingdom of Poland. It gained considerable institutional privileges during the 1333-1370 reign of Casimir the Great. In 1413, following a series of tentative personal unions between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of...
) and had substantial estates centred on Szeliwy, near Łowicz, in central Poland. The family had a long history of patriotic activity, and her father had fought with Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva was a Hungarian lawyer, journalist, politician and Regent-President of Hungary in 1849. He was widely honored during his lifetime, including in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a freedom fighter and bellwether of democracy in Europe.-Family:Lajos...
and Józef Bem
Józef Bem
Józef Zachariasz Bem was a Polish general, an Ottoman Pasha and a national hero of Poland and Hungary, and a figure intertwined with other European nationalisms...
in the late 1840s. He had also suffered considerable financial loss through the part that he played in the Polish rebellion of 1863.
Stanisława had trained as an artist in Cracow prior to enrolling at the Académie Julian
Académie Julian
The Académie Julian was an art school in Paris, France.Rodolphe Julian established the Académie Julian in 1868 at the Passage des Panoramas, as a private studio school for art students. The Académie Julian not only prepared students to the exams at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, but offered...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, in 1896. In the following summer she went to Jersey
Jersey
Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...
to the wedding of a fellow Polish art student Janina Flamm to Eric Forbes-Robertson
Eric Forbes-Robertson
Eric Forbes-Robertson was a British figure and landscape painter, the brother of two actors Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Norman Forbes ....
. It was here that she met the English artist Robert Bevan
Robert Bevan
Robert Polhill Bevan was an English painter, draughtsman and lithographer. He was a founding member of the Camden Town Group, the London Group, and the Cumberland Market Group.-Early life:...
. By the end of the year she and Bevan were married in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
.
They settled in Swiss Cottage
Swiss Cottage
Swiss Cottage is a district of the London Borough of Camden in London, England. Thedistrict is located north-west of Charing Cross. It is centred on the junction of Avenue Road and Finchley Road and is the location of Swiss Cottage tube station.-Etymology:...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. She exhibited with the Women's International Art Club and New English Art Club
New English Art Club
The New English Art Club was founded in London in 1885 as an alternate venue to the Royal Academy.-History:Young English artists returning from studying art in Paris mounted the first exhibition of the New English Art Club in April 1886...
and both exhibited at the Allied Artists’ Association in 1908. However, being a woman, she was ineligible for membership of either the Fitzroy Street Group or the later Camden Town Group
Camden Town Group
The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists active 1911-1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.-History:...
.
De Karłowska was a founder member of the London Group
London Group
The London Group is an artists' exhibiting society based in London, England, founded in 1913, when the Camden Town Group came together with the English Vorticists and other independent artists to challenge the domination of the Royal Academy, which had become unadventurous and conservative....
and showed with them throughout her life. Her work combined a modernist style with elements of Polish folk art. In March 1910, Huntly Carter said of it…”what S. de Karlowska has to say she tells us lucidly in pure and harmonious colour.”
R.A. Bevan
Robert Alexander Polhill Bevan CBE was a significant figure in British communications and advertising during the mid-20th century...
(Bevan). Remaining in London after her husband’s death in 1925, she spent the war years in Chester
Chester
Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...
. She travelled to Poland until the late 1930s and would holiday with her daughter's family at Plénauf-Val André in Northern Brittany and at St Nicolas-du-Pelem, further south. Many of her London and Breton paintings can be seen in public collections.
Stanisława de Karłowska died in London in 1952 and is buried in the Bevan family tomb in Cuckfield
Cuckfield
Cuckfield is a large village and civil parish in the Mid Sussex District of West Sussex, England, on the southern slopes of the Weald. It lies south of London, north of Brighton, and east northeast of the county town of Chichester. Nearby towns include Haywards Heath to the southeast and Burgess...
, Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
. In common with her husband, de Karlowska sold few of her works during her lifetime. Her estate, including several hundred of Robert Bevan’s paintings, drawings and lithographs were left equally to her two children. Many works were presented to public collections over the following twenty years.
She had one solo exhibition during her lifetime at the Adams Gallery in London, in 1935. Her memorial exhibition was also held there in 1954, and in 1968 a joint Bevan - de Karłowska show was held at the Anglo-Polish Society, London.
Stanisława de Karłowska was the great grandmother of the historian of architectural paint and colour, Patrick Baty
Patrick Baty
Patrick Baty, is a British historian of paint and colour, who works as a consultant in the decoration of historic buildings.-Early years:...
.
Works in Public Collections
Aberdeen Art Gallery;Brighton Museum and Art Gallery;
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum;
Cardiff, National Museum of Wales;
Eastbourne, Towner Art Gallery;
Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery;
Huddersfield Library and Art Gallery;
Hull, University Art Collection;
Kettering, The Coach House;
Leeds City Art Gallery;
London, Museum of London;
London, Tate Britain;
Manchester City Art Galleries;
Nottingham Castle Museum;
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum;
Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery;
Southampton City Art Gallery;
Swindon Museum and Art Gallery;
Wakefield City Art Gallery;
Worthing Museum and Art Gallery;
York City Art Gallery;
South Africa: Port Elizabeth, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum