Józef Potocki nad Setitem###

Stefan Norblin, Józef Potocki hunting at the river Setit. signed „S. Norblin”. The last, already posthumous portrait of count Józef Potocki of Antoniny (1862-1922), it belongs to the Łańcut castle historic collection. Alfred Antoni Potocki, the last ordinary, commissioned a portrait of his uncle just after his death, from a Warsaw painter, very popular at the time, one Stefan Norblin. It depicts an episode from the last safari of the count that he undertook together with his sons, Roman and Józef, in February and March of 1921, in Sudan. The vantage point for the watercolour was a photograph included in the memoirs of Józef Potocki At the Setit. Memoirs from a hunting trip, Gebethner and Wolff, Kraków, 1922, depicting the count at a river bank, with locals standing beside him, and a third one atop a donkey, with a fallen hyena hung over its back. In the background on the right, there is a broad bush. In the sketch from the collection of the National Museum of Warsaw, most likely one of several, Norblin decided to forgo the local on the left side, holding the fallen birds, so that Józef is depicted as the first on the left, with the other local on the other side; he in turn is facing the front, with a rifle in his left hand, rested on his left arm; the other local in turn is sitting on a donkey bearing fallen prey, just like in the photograph. In the end, the painter depicted the count and the locals on an elevated cliff – it is not found in the photograph. Both are bare-chested – yet dressed in the photograph. This trick, most likely a purposeful one, provides the composition not only with a picturesque air, but also introduces an atmosphere of wild, even original Africa. The first one on the right is depicted just as in the sketch with the rifle, while the other, on the left, is seen three quarters from the rear, walking down from the cliff carrying two fallen birds in his left hand. In the photograph he is front-facing, holding the birds in both hands. The painter finally abandoned the depiction of the third local, mounting the donkey, who, now without its load and the rider, was moved farther back. In the background one can see the blue waters of the Setit and the other river bank. Norblin depicted the count facing slightly to the side – just like in the studio photo, also included in the book At the Setit. He painted the silhouette of the hunter like this in the sketch, his face slightly elevated and turned 3/4 to the left, supported on a staff, with his left arm behind his belt, wearing a shirt, jodhpurs and a cork helmet. In the watercolour his posture is the same, but he is provided with two hunting attributes as depicted in the studio photograph – binoculars hanging from his neck and a rifle hanging horizontally on his back. He is also wearing a bright pullover – a novelty, most likely an invention of the painter; we do not find it in any photograph from this safari. Aldona Cholewianka-Kruszyńska