In a forging shop

Franz Xavier Lampi was born into an Italian family settled in Austria. His father was the famous painter Jan Baptist Lampi, who gave his son his first painting lessons. Franz Lampi continued his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under the guidance of Heinrich Füger and Hubert Maurer. After completing his studies, the young painter went on an artistic journey to Germany and Italy. Upon his return to Austria, Lampi married at the behest of his parents, but the rather short and unsuccessful marriage led to a conflict with his father and the painter left Vienna around 1814. After his departure, the artist initially stayed in Hungary, where he worked as a portrait painter. In 1815, he moved to Poland. The painter settled in Warsaw, where he gained recognition as a portraitist, above all, of the aristocratic class and the wealthy landed gentry. His rapid career was also facilitated by the memory, still vivid in Warsaw circles, of his father, who lived in Warsaw between 1788 and 1791. It is worth noting that the artist combined his work as a painter with educational activity. In 1841, he opened a private painting school, and planned to create a special atelier for ladies.

Lampi's portraits are characterised by a studied pose of the model, soft colour tones and delicate modelling. What is important, the painter's extraordinary care in the detailed reproduction of costumes, the then fashionable complicated women's hairstyles and suits of jewellery, orders and attributes of public functions performed by men undoubtedly emphasised the splendour of the portrayed person - and thus influenced the almost constantly increasing number of orders.

Lampi's artistic output is dominated by refined, discreetly idealized images of women. This painting, belonging to the collection of the National Museum in Lublin, is part of a slightly different trend in which the painter felt equally comfortable. The artist often reached for Romantic themes, and it is not difficult to find paintings with fantastically recorded visions of sea storms, sinking ships and survivors fighting for life, maintained in night scenery. Lampi emphasised the dramatic pathos of a human's struggle with the element of the sea and his defencelessness in the face of the powerful forces of nature.