DOI: 10.36871/hon.202204085
Authors
O. N. Popko
Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk, 220030, Republic of Belarus
Abstract
The Polish artist Jan Ksawery Kaniewski is one of the little-studied portrait painters of the
"Pushkin era", having depicted many of the great Russian poet's contemporaries. The article
is devoted to the analysis of watercolor and pencil portraits from the collection of the princes
of Wittgenstein, it provides some biographical information about the artist's life and the vicissitudes
of his models' fate. The analysis of the album with portraits of Wittgenstein's servants
created by Kaniewski, allows to identify the principles of the compositional construction of the
portrait in the context of the profession, which were revealed by the artist for the first time, but
were not developed in the art of the XIXth century. Some pencil portraits approach the boundaries
of genre art, which is an undoubted creative success of the artist and makes his work unique.
Based on a comparison of works in two albums of the artist's drawings, the author concludes
that the choice of portrait technique depends on the person being portrayed. As a confidant
of the Wittgensteins, Kaniewski was able to capture many people related to this family:
the children of the prince, employees and servants, acquaintances.
Keywords
graphic portrait, Jan Ksawery Kaniewski, Lev Petrovich Wittgenstein, watercolor portrait, Sayn Palace
