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Bust of Franciszek Smolka

Tadeusz Blotnicki

Basic information

ID: С-I-1162
Author: Tadeusz Blotnicki
Name: Bust of Franciszek Smolka
Date of creation: c.1895
Country: Austro-Hungarian Empire
Culture: Modern times Contemporary times
Technique: moulding
Material: faience
Dimensions (height x width x depth, cm): 43 x 37 x 21

Additionally

Type: sculpture 3D
Genre: portraiture
Plot: Portrait bust
Provenance: Museum of the Lubomirski Princes in Lviv Vasyl Stefanyk Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv

Information about author

Author: Tadeusz Blotnicki
Artist's lifetime: 1858–1928
Country: Austrian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland
Biography: Tadeusz Blotnicki (8 October 1858, Lviv – 28 March 1928, Krakow) was a Polish sculptor. He worked in Lviv and Krakow. He came from a well-known Lviv family of artists. The master's father, Edward Blotnicki (1830–1880), was a writer and artist, and his brother Stanislaw, brother-in-law Juliusz, and cousin Bruno Tepa were devoted to painting. Tadeusz received his first art lessons from his father. In his youth, he studied in the studios of the painter Andrzej Grabowski and the sculptor Parys Filippi. After graduating from the Lviv Real School in 1874, he created plaster busts of King Sigismund II Augustus and Franciszek Smolka, which were exhibited in the High Castle. Between 1874 and 1876, he studied at the Krakow School of Fine Arts under Henryk Kossowski and Marceli Guyski. T. Blotnicki's first work in Krakow was the statuette "Hamlet in the Cemetery" (1876), full of romantic echoes. T. Blotnicki's works exhibited in Lviv in 1876–1877 received favourable reviews from art critics. Thanks to M. Guyski, in 1877–1879 the sculptor continued his studies at the Vienna Academy of Arts under Kaspar von Zumbusch. For the statue "Resting Samson" (1878), he received the first prize and a scholarship to Paris. In 1879, he was awarded the Academy's prize for the plaster model of the statue "Switezianka" ("The Nymph of Lake Switez") for the fountain in Halytska Square in Lviv. Returning to Lviv in 1880, he set up a studio in the house of Countess Roza Lanckoronska at 11 Third of May Street (now Sichovykh Striltsiv Street; the house has not been preserved). In the summer of 1881, he received a scholarship from the Tovarnytskyi family of Lviv for a one-year trip abroad, and in September, he went to Florence. He travelled with the sculptor Teofil Lenartowicz and worked in his studio for some time. He became interested in Neo-Florentine and Italian Verismo. In 1882, he participated in the XVth exhibition of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Lviv. At the end of 1883, he returned to his hometown, where he received numerous commissions and gained recognition. In 1885, he became engaged to the actress and writer Waleria Solecka. In T. Blotnicki's works of the "first Lviv period", one can see the characteristics of "academic Realism", the desire for "Baroque", exquisite whimsy of details and a connection with Austrian and Italian sculpture of the 1870s and 1880s. In 1886, the master moved to Krakow. From time to time, he returned to Lviv to complete a number of commissions. He was a member of the committee organising the retrospective section of the Galician Regional Exhibition in Lviv (1894). In January–May 1905, he stayed in Lviv in connection with a personal exhibition at the Museum of Art and Industry, which attracted the attention of the public and critics. In 1905, he organised a posthumous exhibition of T. Baracz and lectured on the work of Parys Filippi and his students. From 1906, he lived permanently in Lviv and worked in his studio at 9 Sapihy Street (now Stepan Bandera Street). In 1907, he became a professor of sculpture and ornamental drawing at the Lviv Polytechnic. During the "second Lviv period", he devoted himself to monumental and decorative sculpture and monument design. Between 1906 and 1914, the artist's work developed in the direction of Secessionist linear rhythm and symbolic imagery. Some of his works acquired neo-Baroque characteristics. In 1914, T. Blotnicki moved to Krakow, where he taught costume design at the State Women's Industrial School and the City Drama School. He was a member of the Society of Polish Artists in Krakow. He was a member of the art group "Zero". He published articles in the "Czas" (Time), "Słowo Polskie" (Polish Word), "Krytyka" (Critic), and "Widnokręgi" (Viewpoints) magazines. The lack of educational literature on costume design prompted the master to write a work on the history of costume. He prepared a manuscript titled "Proportions of the Human Body". The sculptor died in Krakow and was buried in the Rakowicki cemetery. In May–June 1928, a posthumous exhibition of the artist's works was held in Lviv as part of the "Spring Salon". In 1930, T. Blotnicki's scientific work "Essay on the History of Costume" was published posthumously.

Object description

The "Bust of Franciszek Smolka" (1895) from the collection of Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery is one of T. Blotnicki's numerous attempts to portray the famous politician, lawyer, Lviv advocate, honorary citizen of Lviv (1861), ambassador of the Galician Sejm and the Austrian Parliament in Vienna, and its president in 1848, 1881–1893. In 1874, the sculptor created the first plaster bust of the politician and presented it to the public in the High Castle. In 1893, T. Blotnicki received an order for a marble bust of F. Smolka, then a member of the Galician Regional Sejm and the Austrian Parliament in Vienna, President of the Chamber of Deputies, for the hall of the Lviv City Council. He worked on the portrait from nature in Lviv in April–July 1893. He immortalised the image in a marble bust, which has stood in the Lviv Assembly Hall since November 1895, and in a plaster half-figure (1898 /?/). In 1905, he proposed to the city council a project for the tomb of F. Smolka in the Lychakiv cemetery as a bust on a granite column. The neoclassical bronze monument to the politician by T. Blotnicki was unveiled on 8 December 1913 on F. Smolka Square in Lviv (destroyed after 1949). The portrait in the Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery collection was cast in faience from a terracotta model (1895) in a factory in Patskiv in 1912–1914. As with all of Blotnicki's works of the 1890s, the bust is characterised by a combination of clear academic architectonics and the Baroque dynamism of "open" sculptural form, filigree rhythm, and decorative detail. The historical significance and monumentality of the image are given by the majestic inclination of the head and its expression through the beard and moustache, which form a triangular base. The sculpture's plastic solution is characterised by a combination of soft modelling, accurate reproduction of the portrait's features, psychology and an almost Secessionist decorative and rhythmic interpretation of the form. The figurative emotional mode of the sculpture is determined by a deeply satisfied grief, full of knowledge. The memorial character of the portrait, created at the end of F. Smolka's life, indicates its constitutionalising on the edge of history, modernity, and the future.

Inscriptions

Signed at the bottom right: "T. Błotnicki"; at the back left is the company's mark: a shield with the Rogala coat of arms; framed by the inscription: "POLOGNE / PACYKÓW /... / GALICIE / 118 / 5. / 7: / 7".

Portrayed person