Still-life with pheasant and lemons

This artist was born and grew up on the Spygliai estate in the former district of Užventis near Šiauliai. According to Vaidutė Ščiglienė, who studied the life and work of Zofija Liseckaitė-Plechavičienė (1910–2010), when she was in exile in the USA, Zofija would tell her daughters about her father, who had been a great lover of hunting, and kept many hunting dogs at Spygliai. Zofija must have painted this picture on her father’s estate when she was about to marry the young physician Leonardas Plechavičius. A graduate of the Viennese Women’s Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, Zofija Plechavičienė painted objects that were characteristic of the winter hunting season, arranged against a man’s green jacket: a dead pheasant, lemons of a perfect shape and colour for marinating the game, and a bottle of sweet wine for the cook to soften the meat (or something stronger for the hunters to keep warm). Still-lifes of game by women may be rare, but the watercolour Heathcock hanging on the door (1926) by Anna Sołtanówna-Römer (1895–1974), in the collection of the National Museum of Lithuania, should be mentioned as another picture by a young member of Lithuania’s landed gentry.

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Expositions: “Personal. Lithuanian Women's Art 1918-1940”, 14 April – 04 June  2017, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius (curator Ieva Burbaitė)

This artist was born and grew up on the Spygliai estate in the former district of Užventis near Šiauliai. According to Vaidutė Ščiglienė, who studied the life and work of Zofija Liseckaitė-Plechavičienė (1910–2010), when she was in exile in the USA, Zofija would tell her daughters about her father, who had been a great lover of hunting, and kept many hunting dogs at Spygliai. Zofija must have painted this picture on her father’s estate when she was about to marry the young physician Leonardas Plechavičius. A graduate of the Viennese Women’s Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, Zofija Plechavičienė painted objects that were characteristic of the winter hunting season, arranged against a man’s green jacket: a dead pheasant, lemons of a perfect shape and colour for marinating the game, and a bottle of sweet wine for the cook to soften the meat (or something stronger for the hunters to keep warm). Still-lifes of game by women may be rare, but the watercolour Heathcock hanging on the door (1926) by Anna Sołtanówna-Römer (1895–1974), in the collection of the National Museum of Lithuania, should be mentioned as another picture by a young member of Lithuania’s landed gentry.

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Expositions: “Personal. Lithuanian Women's Art 1918-1940”, 14 April – 04 June  2017, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius (curator Ieva Burbaitė)