Portrait of Potocka

In our collection, we have a drawing depicting a beautiful young woman. On the back of the drawing, there is a partially removed sticker with her surname Potocka. Her first name remains a mystery. It was known to those lucky enough to have seen the sticker in its entirety and, primarily, to the author of that drawing, Wojciech Grabowski.

He was born in Krakow in 1805 and studied there at the Krakow School of Fine Arts and later in Munich and Vienna. Having returned home, he settled in Lviv from where he travelled around Poland and look for inspiration for his works. He used mainly with crayons, charcoal and watercolours. He painted our mysterious Potocka in 1884 and died in Lviv one year later.

He depicted her in bust, in ¾ facing right with her head tilted to the left looking ahead. She is undoubtedly beautiful. She has an oval face, high forehead, and dark regular eyebrows. Her hair, brushed away from her forehead, flows down her back and left shoulder. The woman is wearing a dress revealing her cleavage and shoulders. We see a string of pearls round her neck.

Anna Szczęsny