Stanislawa de Karlowska

Rosete Montiel Mara de los ngeles
Valle Gracia Andrea Montserrat

Stanislawa de Karlowska (1876-1952)
Stanislawa de Karlowska, known to her family and friends as Stasia, was born on 8 May
1876 at the family estate at Szeliwy, near the town of Lowicz in Russian-occupied Poland 1.
Her father, Alexander de Karlowski, was a Polish patriot who had fought in struggles for
independence, for which he reputedly endangered his life and suffered considerable
financial loss2. She studied art in Warsaw and Krakow and at the Acadmie Julian in Paris
in the mid-1890s. There she met her future husband, artist Robert Bevan. After their
marriage in 1898, they settled in England. They were both founder members of the London
Group3, the successor of the Camden Town Group 4, with whom they exhibited for many
years5.
Her work relates closely to what is thought of as Camden Town painting, using a
modern post-impressionist style with bright colors to depict elements from the local urban
environment like the growing industrial landscape, and the countryside. Karlowskas work
was also inspired by her Polish heritage. The flat perspectives, intense colors, elongated
1 Grant M. Waters, Dictionary of British Artists Working 19001950, Eastbourne
1975, 186.
2 R.A. Bevan, Robert Bevan 18651925: A Memoir by his Son, London 1965,
p.12.
3 Louise Kosman. Stannislawa de Karlowska. Modern British Art.
http://www.louisekosman.com/artists/artist_85.php
4 Wendy Baron, Perfect Moderns: A History of the Camden Town Group,
Aldershot and Vermont 2000, 66.
figures and dream-like atmosphere of her paintings correspond somewhat with the stylized
nature of Eastern European folk art, inviting comparison with other modern artists also
drawing on folk-art traditions such as the Russian-born Marc Chagall (18871985) and the
Polish Zofia Stryjenska (18911976)6.
Karlowska began exhibiting with the Womens International Art Club soon after 1900 7. The
club had evolved out of the Paris Art Club, which had been set up in 1898 and required
members to have studied in Paris, to be women and do strong work 8, and became a club
that aspired to be at the forefront of modern artistic activity. In a 1910 review, the art critic
Huntly Carter singled Karlowskas work out for mention saying that:
The work of the Womens International Art Club, now being exhibited at the
Grafton Galleries, is above the average is clear from the beginning. In the first room
one meets with at least half a dozen women who have something uncommonly
interesting to say in paint. Among them are three artists who are painting in colour,
whose work is frank and honest, and not disposed of with a few fierce dashes of the
brush, but in a complete, substantial, and emphatic way. What S. de Karlowska has
to say she tells us lucidly in pure and harmonious color. Her two studies of still life
speak in the broadest, simplest, and most convincing terms.9
In 1908 she and her husband became friends with painters Harold Gilman and
Spencer Gore, who invited Bevan to 19 Fitzroy Street after seeing his work. Although
Karlowska was not a member of the Fitzroy Street or Camden Town Groups, she was
6 Helena Bonett, Stanislawa de Karlowska 18761952, artist biography,
January 2011, in Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt, Jennifer Mundy Eds. The Camden
Town Group in Context, May 2011. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/researchpublications/camden-town-group/stanislawa-de-karlowska
7 Frances Stenlake, From Cuckfield to Camden Town: The Story of Artist Robert
Bevan (18651925), London 2008, 153.
8 Deborah Cherry, Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists, London 1993, 76.
9 Huntly Carter, Art, New Age, 10 March 1910, 452.
friends with many of the members and inspired portraits painted by Gilman and Gore 10. She
went on to exhibit with the London Group for many decades after her election as a member
in January 1914. Some museums that nowadays hold examples of her work are: Fitzwilliam
Museum, York Museum Trust, Southampton City Art Gallery, Kirlees Museum, The
Hepworth Wakefield, Nottingham Art Museum, Museum of London, Swindon Art Gallery,
Worthing Museum, University of Hull, Glasgow Museums and Tate Gallery11.
At the beginning, Karlowskas work remained secondary to her husbands, at her
own choosing. Every year he spent months away painting in the countryside, while
Karlowska often remained at home looking after the children and the house. Following
Bevans death in 1925 Karlowska remained at Adamson Road, living on the top two floors,
which had a purpose-built studio. During this period, she created prints and new paintings,
and exhibited with the Society of Wood Engravers. Over the years she went travelling to
Italy, France and Poland, locations which inspired her paintings, for example, The Quay at
Binic, Brittany (1935), as well as many locations around England12.
Karlowska held her first solo exhibition at the Adams Gallery in OctoberNovember
1935, selling six paintings13. The preface for the catalogue was written by a former Camden
Town Group member and then director of the Tate Gallery, James Bolivar Manson who
10 The Painters of Camden Town 19051920, exhibition catalogue, Christies,
London 1988 (6).
12 Frances Stenlake, From Cuckfield to Camden Town: The Story of Artist
Robert Bevan (18651925), Cuckfield, Sussex 1999, 48.
13 Adams Bros., letter to Mrs. Bevan, 10 December 1935, Tate Archive TGA
9216.
mentioned that she had the ability to find beauty in the most ordinary scenes: street
corners, the backs of houses and so on and with such motifs she produces satisfying works
of art14. She remained friends with the London group members until her death on 9
December 1952 at the age of seventy-six15. After her death a memorial exhibition was
organized at the Adams Gallery in October in 1954. The Anglo-Polish Society also held an
exhibition of Karlowskas and Bevans work in MarchApril 1968, when their daughter
Halszka was chair of the society, in appreciation of the couples support of Polish people 16.
Some
of
her
paintings
can
be
seen
in
the
following
webpage:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/stanislawa-de-karlowska
Bibliography:
Adams Bros., letter to Mrs. Bevan, 10 December 1935, Tate Archive TGA 9216.
Baron, Wendy. Perfect Moderns: A History of the Camden Town Group, Aldershot and
Vermont 2000. 66.
Bevan, R.A. Robert Bevan 18651925: A Memoir by his Son, London 1965. 12.
Bolivar Manson, James. Preface, in Paintings by S. de Karlowska, exhibition catalogue,
Adams Gallery, London 1935. Copy in the collection of the Tate Archive TGA 9216/109.
Bonett, Helena. Stanislawa de Karlowska 18761952, artist biography, January 2011, in
Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt, Jennifer Mundy Eds. The Camden Town Group in
14 James Bolivar Manson, Preface, in Paintings by S. de Karlowska, exhibition
catalogue, Adams Gallery, London 1935. Copy in the collection of the Tate
Archive TGA 9216/109.
15 Helena Bonett, Stanislawa de Karlowska 18761952, artist biography,
January 2011, in Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt, Jennifer Mundy Eds. The Camden
Town Group in Context, May 2011. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/researchpublications/camden-town-group/stanislawa-de-karlowska
16 An Exhibition of Selected Paintings by Robert Bevan, 18651925, and his
Wife Stanislawa de Karlowska, 18761952, Anglo-Polish Society, London 1968.
Context, May 2011. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-towngroup/stanislawa-de-karlowska

Carter, Huntly. Art, New Age, 10 March 1910, 452.
Cherry, Deborah. Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists, London 1993, 76.
Kosman, Louise. Stannislawa de Karlowska. Modern British
Art.http://www.louisekosman.com/artists/artist_85.php
Stenlake, Frances. From Cuckfield to Camden Town: The Story of Artist Robert Bevan
(18651925), London 2008, 153.
Waters M. Grant, Dictionary of British Artists Working 19001950, Eastbourne 1975, 186.

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Rosete Montiel Mara de los ngeles

Valle Gracia Andrea Montserrat

Context, May 2011. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-towngroup/stanislawa-de-karlowska

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