Stanisław Potocki

Portrait painting from the museum’s collection depicting Stanisław Potocki – a middle-aged man portrayed in half-figure against a neutral background, wearing a general’s uniform richly decorated with his orders (Virtuti Militari, Order of St Stanislaus II Class, the French Order of the Legion of Honour and the great ribbon of the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle). Work of an unknown painter from the 19th century. Stanisław Florian Potocki, of the Pilawa coat-of-arms (b. May 1776, Monasterzyska, d. November 1830, Warsaw), was the Starost of Halicz, Count, General of Infantry in the Kingdom of Poland, son of the Starost of Halicz and Czorsztyn, Józef Makary. He himself, twice married, was the father of Leon Potocki, a well-known diarist, whose work Święcone w domu Potockich (Feast at the Potockis) are kept in the collection of the Łańcut library. During the Kościuszko Uprising, Stanisław was adjutant to Prince Józef Poniatowski, later participated in the wars under Napoleon. On the night of 29–30 November 1830, while trying to prevent the outbreak of the November Uprising, he was seriously wounded and died as a result of gunshot wounds. Loyal to Tsar Nicholas I, he was immortalised on a no longer existing monument erected by order of the Tsar on the Saxon Square in Warsaw.