In Search of the Image of Chopin's Music

Wojciech Weiss was a Polish painter and synesthete who at the threshold of the 19th and 20th centuries attempted to capture the expressive power of Chopin's music in a single portrait of the composer. He wanted to find the right image for the expressive power of his music. The sketches reveal that his imagination  balanced on a thin border between representation and abstraction. 

One of Weiss's ideas was to depict the composer together with a women. The female presence symbolized the muse who inspired artist's creation. 

Other idea was to find an evocative landscape that resonates with the expression of Chopin's music. Here we can see oblique lines that represent a pouring rain. This is the image often linked to Chopin's Prelude in D flat major. 

In Weiss's sketches expressive images emarged from the entanglement of wavy lines.

Here we can see Chopin's profile easily recognizable due to the characteristic shape of his nose. 

Above one can notice the silhuette of a pianist sitting at his instrument. 

Who is the women who accompanies Chopin in some of the sketches? 

Is this George Sand, the companion of the best years of Chopin's creative activity? 

Is this a listener for whom he plays and creates? 

Or is she the music herself in which Chopin engages with all of his senses? 

Some of the sketches reveal a close link between the expressive, wavy lines and the sounds of music.

Here we can see the mourning bells that emerge from the wavy lines hovering above musical notation. Are these the bells of Chopin's funeral march? 

This oil gives us the closest approximation of the colours that Weiss would use in the creation of his painting. 

Taking a closer look we can observe how the wavy lines are transformed by the use of colour. 

Weiss's Szopen [Chopin] today is known only from the archival photograph. We do not know its colours, but we know that they made a great impression on the critiques.