Le protecteur

At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries the Czartoryski family created in Puławy an outstanding cultural centre known as the New Athens. This magnificent family seat with a valuable library, a beautiful park with two unusual buildings - the Temple of Sybil and the Gothic House, treasuries of national memorabilia and masterpieces of art - was a great achievement of the enlightened and patriotic aristocracy of the last years of the free Polish state.

The print shows a part of the garden belonging to the palace and park complex in Puławy. It is one of the pages of Armand Théophile Cassagne's lithographic album Album des vues de l'Institut Alexandra du jardin et des environs de Novo Alexandra (Pulawy) dessiné d'après nature par Madame Czernof, published in Paris in 1858 and dedicated to Tsar Alexander II. The author of the drawing and watercolour prototypes, which served as the basis for the lithograph, Barbara Czernof née Groten, was a drawing teacher at the Alexandrian Institute for the Education of Ladies. The Tsarist educational institution for girls functioned in the estate confiscated by the Russians after 1831, which was renamed New Alexandria. In the 1850s the artist created many works showing the former Czartoryski residence and views of surrounding towns: Parchatka, Janowiec, Kazimierz. Twenty four works were included in the album of views. They represent a type of academic landschaft with staffage, sentimental in expression, semi-amateur in terms of technique.

The main motif of several of them were old trees, picturesque oaks, poplars, linden. Trees played a special role in the conception of the park of Puławy, the work of Duchess Izabela Czartoryska née Flemming. Her English-style garden was one of the most outstanding designs in Europe at that time. The Duchess included her thoughts on the art of gardening, including trees, in the book Various Thoughts on the Method of Establishing Gardens.

The view entitled Le Protecteur depicts a hundred years old huge Vistula poplar with a charming gardener's house with white walls and a thatched roof behind it. The gardener in the foreground, the title “protector”, is probably talking to a local landowner about the damage caused by a recent storm. The storm also caused damage to a centuries-old poplar tree, whose massive bough and branches are lying on the ground, broken.