Group portrait. Lady with girls

Orphaned by his father at an early age, Łukaszewicz was sent to study at Dominican schools in Vilnius. For several years he studied with a miniaturist Józef Kosiński. At that time, he often created copies of the masters. At an exhibition in 1819, the artist's paintings caught the attention of Prince Constantine, who engaged Łukaszewicz as a court painter of military subjects. He also painted many portraits. Contemporary critics of the painter pointed out the weaknesses of his technique resulting from the lack of a thorough artistic education, but they appreciated his artistic miniatures, noting that he fully revealed his talent in them. In the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin, there is a group portrait, which depicts a seated young woman with three children against a landscape background maintained in greenish-brown tones. The woman in the centre of the composition, with her head slightly tilted to the left shoulder, is wearing a white muslin dress with a neckline. Brown curls surround an oval face with a thin nose, narrow pale lips and beer eyes. Her right arm embraces the girl cuddling up to her, and her left arm embraces the fair-haired child sitting on her lap holding a bird with her chubby hands. The children are dressed in white muslin tunics, their faces surrounded by curls are slightly smiling, and their gazes, like those of the woman, are directed at the viewer. In the lower part, the group is overshadowed by the half-figure of the eldest girl, standing in a golden dress. She is holding a bird in her bent right hand. Her head is slightly raised, her gaze directed at the bird in the hands of the fair-haired child. On the lower right, a blue drapery wraps around the child's leg, which the woman is holding with her hand, and a fragment of the drapery can also be seen by the right hand embracing the child's arm is cuddling up to the woman.

Beata Małgorzata Wolska