Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

Prominent Poles

Artur Grottger, romantic painter and graphic designer, known for his drawings about January Rising.

Portrait of Artur Grottger, painter

Born:   November 11, 1837, in Ottyniowice (Austro-Hungarian partition of Poland, presently Otynevychi, Ukraine).

Died:  December 13, 1867, in Am�lie-les-Bains-Palalda, France.

Early days. His father, Jan Jozef, leased an estate belonging to Count Siemianowski. Elder Grottger took part in the November Rising in the Fifth Ulan Regiment (Warsaw�s Children). He was an amateur painter who finished the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts. In 1848 Artur studied painting under the apprenticeships of Maszkowski and Kossak in Lwow. Later he received an imperial scholarship to attend the Krakow School of Fine Arts, where he studied under Łuszczkiewicz and Stattler. He moved to Vienna in 1854, where he produced some of his most famous paintings. During the period 1855-1855 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Career. Around this time he met one of his biggest future art patrons and benefactors, Aleksander Pappenheim. Grottger painted mostly epic battle scenes. In 1865, he returned from Vienna to Poland and stayed in Cracow and Lwow, but because of financial difficulties he had to earn his living traveling from one mansion to another and producing paintings of often banal themes. However in the same time he created with white and black crayons cycles of dramatic and very moving drawings (Polonia, Lithuania and others). In 1866 he met a 16 year old Wanda Monne whose family was against this liaison. In search for success (and money) Grottger left for Paris in 1866. Arriving in Paris, he became seriously ill of tuberculosis. Despite of his illness he was able to finish a cycle �The War� which he sold to the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I. In December 1867 the doctors send Grottger to a famous spa, Amelies-les-Bains, in the Pyrenees where he died after few days. His beloved Wanda brought in his remains to Lwow where they were buried on the Lyczakow Cemetery. His last painting was his self portrait.

Cycles of drawings. Warszawa I, Warszawa II, Polonia, Lithuania, Bor litewski (Lithuanian Forest), Wojna (The War)

Source:
This article uses, among others, material from the Wikipedia article "Artur Grottger" licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. :
Culture.pl (in Polish; Irena Kossowska)
Malarze (includes reproductions of 15 Grottger's paintings)
Pinakoteka (includes reproductions of numerous paintings and drawings; in Polish)

Return to home page:
Prominent Poles