The Chervonohrad Castle near Zaleszczyki is now located in Ukraine. Before World War II, Marian Stroński visited the castle regularly, every year. He was friends with the castle’s then and last owner, Maria Eleonora Wanda Lubomirska, née Zamoyska, widow of Adam Lubomirski. By the 1930s, when Stroński was a regular visitor, the castle’s glory days were behind it. Destroyed during World War I, it was not renovated until the 1930s. Marian Stroński may have participated in these works. It is certain that the castle was in such good condition that the artist set up his studio there, one of his best, as he recalled. He simply felt at home there. Surrounded by nature, far from the hustle and bustle of the city and everyday life, he could create in peace. We see this lightness in his works. The castle’s eclectic architecture, combining elements of neo-Gothic, neo-Renaissance, and classicism, rises on a slope above the Dżuryn River valley. It rises like a fairytale castle amidst a dense forest. Stroński’s works feature primarily his neo-Renaissance towers topped with an attic, somewhat reminiscent of the towers of Przemyśl’s Kazimierzowski Castle. Perhaps that’s why the artist so readily captured them in his works? Marian Stroński perceived this fairytale, unreal atmosphere of a landscape seen as if through a muslin haze, reminiscent of a dream, in Czerwonogrod, and this is how he depicted that castle, nestled among trees and ferns.
