Krakow Wedding

Small-sized painting, oil on board, from the collection of the Potocki family, the former owners of the Łańcut Castle. It depicts a rural Podkarpacie Region wedding procession, returning from the church visible in the background. A wedding carriage with the newlyweds in the centre, guests and onlookers all around. A scene full of movement with distinctive colourful and festive costumes of the villagers. The painting is signed in the lower right corner “Tadeusz Rybkowski/ 1884 r.”. Tadeusz Rybkowski (born in 1848 in Kielce, died in September 1926 in Lviv) was a Polish painter and illustrator. After passing his matriculation exams in Kielce, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków under Władysław Łuszczkiewicz, and then for two years in Vienna at the local Academy of Fine Arts, where he was a student of the Viennese painter Hans Makart. In 1878 he set up his studio in Vienna. In 1893 he settled permanently in where he became a professor at the Public Industrial School and also opened a private school of painting for women. A very prolific artist, he painted a lot, especially small-size pictures (like the one kept in Łańcut), depicting scenes from the life of the people, weddings, fairs, inns, but also, during the First World War, paintings related to the fights. He was also a portrait artist. He most often used the watercolour technique, but also worked in oil. In Lviv he designed tapestries for the Meeting Room of the Railway Directorate and wall paintings for the Municipal Theatre. In his paintings of genre scenes, he rendered the details of folk costumes with great precision, his watercolour paintings had a reportage character. He was also the author of scenes from the life of Emperor Franz Joseph painted on fans. These fans were presented by Roman Potocki II, First Entailer of Łańcut to the two Archduchesses at the Polish ball in Vienna in 1886. The (three) small-size paintings, including the present one, are exhibited in the Northern Corridor on the second floor of the castle.