Henryk Weyssenhoff

Henryk Bonawentura Kazimierz Weyssenhoff (26 July 1859, Pakriaunys, Kovno Governorate - 23 July 1922, Warsaw) was a Polish-Belarusian landscape painter, illustrator and sculptor of Baltic-German ancestry.

Henryk Weyssenhoff
(date unknown; 1900s?)

Biography

He was descended from an old family of the Livonian nobility. In 1863, his father was exiled to Siberia for his participation in the January Uprising. His mother followed with the family, as far as she could, and he grew up in the Urals. His first lessons in art were given to him there by Lucjan Kraszewski (brother of the writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski), who was also living in exile.[1]

In 1874, his father was pardoned, but they were not allowed to return to their old home, so they settled in Warsaw, where he studied painting with Wojciech Gerson. His work there attracted the attention of Henryk Siemiradzki who, in 1880, helped him gain admission to the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg.[1] He graduated in 1885, earning a silver medal and the official title of "Artist" for his canvas "Transport of the Wounded". In 1889, he spent some time in Munich, improving his skills with Alfred Kowalski.[2]

In 1900, he won another silver medal at the Exposition Universelle. As a result, from 1903 to 1904 he lived in Paris, then settled on his parent's estate near Pukhavichy, in what is now Belarus. During the First World War, he was forced to return to Warsaw and remained there until his death.[2]

An avid hunter, many of his landscapes included animal life. In addition to his painting, he illustrated several works, notably two by his cousin, Józef Weyssenhoff; Erotyki (1911), a book of poetry, and Soból i Panna (1913),[2] a novel that is loosely based on the manorial lifestyle of the Weyssenhoff family.

Selected paintings
  • Bears Playing
    in Front of a House
  • Snow
  • Premonition
  • Moose in the Swamp
gollark: Good news: chaos guardians can indeed go in spatial IO.
gollark: Unless it just tries to fly back to where its crystals ought to be! I should check!
gollark: It would *attack* you, which would work.
gollark: I am not sure.
gollark: It's roughly an ender dragon, and I can but I don't know how permanent it is.

References
  1. Biography and appreciation @ Pravdinsky.
  2. Brief biography @ AgraArt.

Further reading
  • Aneta Pawłowska, Henryk Weyssenhoff (1859-1922). Zapomniany bard Białorusi, Wydawnictwo DiG, 2006 ISBN 83-7181-421-6

Media related to Henryk Weyssenhoff at Wikimedia Commons

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.