Piotr Michałowski
1800 - 1855

He was born to an aristocratic-landowner family. In 1814, he began his studies by auditing classes at the Natural History and Mathematics Departments of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. At home, probably as early as 1816, he took drawing lessons with Józef Brodowski and a little later he started painting lessons with Franciszek Lampi. During 1821-1823 he studied Law and Political Science at the University of Göttingen where he kept close contacts with eminent historians and the supporters of the historical school of legal theory. It was there that he confirmed his Romantic attitude. In 1823, he started his administrative career initially as an unpaid clerk in the Revenue and Treasury Committee of the Polish Kingdom (those days a part of Russia). In 1827, he was appointed head of the Metallurgical Works Department. In 1825, he traveled to Switzerland, Italy and Austria, and in 1828 to Germany, France and England. In 1831, he organized weapons production for the Polish insurgent army upon the order of the Insurgent Government Committee of War. After the downfall of the November (1831) Uprising, Michałowski went to Kraków (those days in the Austrian province of Galicia) and in 1832 to Paris where he started painting studies at the studio of Nicolas Toussaint Charlet, a friend to Théodore Géricault. Beginning in 1833, he rented a studio and started contacts with renowned Paris art merchants, since his watercolors had already gained considerable popularity. In 1835, he traveled to England and after returning, opened his own studio in Kraków. In 1837, he moved to his property in Krzysztoforzyce near Kraków where he built his "painting works," and in 1840, moved to Bolestraszyce near Przemyśl. In the 1840s, he traveled extensively: to Vienna (1838, 1840, 1843) where he was fascinated with Velázquez paintings, to France (1844, 1846, 1847, 1848), Belgium and Holland (1846). He took part in the political and social life of Kraków with dedication and extreme responsibility – characteristic of all his undertakings. In 1848, he took part in the project works on peasant serfdom abolition and was nominated President of the Kraków Region Administrative Council. In 1849, upon his initiative an orphanage was founded in Kraków that he provided with his earnings and the revenue from a charity lottery of his watercolor sales. After the great fire of Kraków in 1850, he joined the victim aid action. In 1853, he performed the duty of Agricultural Society President in Kraków. Michałowski painted oils and watercolors – especially battle scenes (Somosierra), riders, great commanders (Napoleon) and knights. He also created a notable gallery with his family portraits, as well as pictures of friends and peasants. The motifs he undertook were continued and developed into cycles throughout his life. In contemporary Poland, his painting was a unique and solitary phenomenon. A secluded and very personal creativity, shaped by French Romanticism, made him the most outstanding Polish painter of the first half of the nineteenth century. Analyzing the Michałowski phenomenon, Jan Ostrowski wrote in the year 2000: "Working in the Galicia provincial environment, detached from the artistic life centers, deprived of the possibility to confront his own works with the others' achievements, Michałowski was a miraculous success, leaving in his heritage a rich oeuvre of the highest artistic standards. The artist had a sufficient source of income for his living needs. This was a creative drawback as it enabled him to create innumerable and, at present fascinating sketches, but postponed to infinity the realization of plans for great works. With regard to all the admiration of Michałowski's art, one could hardly deny at least a partial agreement to Władysław Łuszczkiewicz’s opinion of the artist: 'Were he not an amateur and a rich gentleman [...]'" (see Michałowski 2000, p. 31). By Anna Król

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