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Old Man

Jan Glowacki

Basic information

ID: Ж-1061
Author: Jan Glowacki
Name: Old Man
Date of creation: 1841
Country: Kingdom of Poland
Culture: Modern times
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions: 62 x 50.5 cm (height x width)

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: portraiture
Plot: Portrait
Provenance: the Dzieduszycki collection

Information about author

Author: Jan Glowacki
Author in the original: Jan Nepomucen Głowacki
Artist's lifetime: 1802–1847
Country: Duchy of Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland
Biography: Jan Nepomucen Głowacki (1802–28 July 1847) was one of the most renowned Polish landscape painters of the first half of the nineteenth century. He was born into the family of an organ builder in Kraków, where he spent most of his life. He attended St Anne’s Gymnasium in Kraków and received his first drawing lessons from Antoni Giziński. Between 1819 and 1825, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków under Józef Brodowski (c. 1775/81–1853) and Józef Peszka (1767–1831). He subsequently studied for several months in Prague and from December 1825 to 1828 at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts under Franz Steinfeld. In 1828, he returned to Kraków, where he assumed the position of assistant professor, and from 1831 served as professor of drawing and painting at St Anne’s Gymnasium. From April 1831 until the reorganisation of the institution in 1833, he lectured as an associate professor at the Kraków School of Fine Arts. In September 1833, he received a two-year scholarship from the Legislative Chamber of the City of Kraków to reside in Rome, from where he travelled to the Alps. Upon his return to Kraków in October 1835, he organised an exhibition of his works created “in the Salzburg and Tyrolean mountains”. In 1836, the Friedlein printing house published an album of engravings entitled 24 Views of Kraków and its Surroundings, Drawn from Nature by J. N. Głowacki, through which the artist’s romantic cityscapes gained popularity during his lifetime. In 1837, he was elected a member of the Kraków Society of Fine Arts, and in 1842–1843, he was appointed to the Chair of Landscape Painting. He was married and had a son, Justyn Jan Głowacki, and a daughter, Emilia. His sister, Tekla, was an illustrator. Głowacki painted primarily landscapes, and less frequently portraits and religious compositions. His paintings, View of the Tatras from Poronin (1836) and Morskie Oko (1837), are regarded as the beginning of Polish realist landscape painting. His work was inspired by Viennese artistic traditions, particularly evident in his portraits, and by the art of the English portraitist Thomas Lawrence. The artist’s oeuvre is characterised by a softness of brushwork and a harmonious use of colour.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Old Man

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