Józef Potocki

Portrait painting from the museum’s collection depicting a boy shown in half-figure, with his eyes directed at the viewer. The boy in question is Józef Mikołaj Ksawery Potocki (b. September 1862 in Lviv, d. August 1922, in Montresor), son of Alfred Józef Potocki, Second Entailer of Łańcut, and Maria Klementyna, née Sanguszko, a traveller, book collector, as well as Deputy to the Russian State Duma, as well as Russian and Austrian Chamberlain. He was initially educated at home, then studied law at the Franciscan University in Lviv. He inherited from his mother a huge estate - Antoniny, Szepetówka and Smołdyrów in Volhynia – reflecting about 63,000 hectares of land. On his recommendation, the Potocki Palace in Warsaw at Krakowskie Przedmieście was also renovated. He abolished the serfdom of his peasants, supported education, had sugar mills built and a railway built. He established a breeding farm of Anglo-Arabian and English horses in Antoniny and a game preserve in Pilawina. He also owned estates in the Podkarpacie region. In his palace in Antoniny, he had a large book collection consisting of some 20,000 volumes and numerous works of art, much of which was destroyed during the First World War and the Polish-Soviet War. He travelled extensively and was the first European to visit the Shinar situated by the Blue Nile. He died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident. The Łańcut painting is a copy from an original by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (b. April 1805 in Menzenschwand, d. July in Frankfurt am Rhein), a German painter and lithographer who became popular as a portraitist of crowned heads and aristocracy He portrayed most of the crowned heads in Europe, the most famous being the portrait of the Austrian Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) from 1864. His way of painting was conservative with characteristic smooth (“enamelled”) surface of paintings. He was never praised by the critics, but was respected by his principals and very popular among them. The portrait in question is exhibited in the Entrance Room on the first floor of the Łańcut Castle.