Dimensions: 25 x 21 cm
Inscribed on the reverse: '"Muse" | Property of Zb. Mehoffer 50 | Z657', on the reverse, a sticker from the Society of Friends of the Fine Arts in Kraków with a description of the work and a stamp from the 1957 exhibition “Stanisław Wyspiański and His Contemporaries,” along with a faintly legible seal in French
Provenance
Zbigniew Mehoffer Collection, Kraków
Ryszard Mehoffer Collection, Kraków
Private collection, Poland
Exhibited
Stanisław Wyspiański and His Contemporaries, Society of Friends of the Fine Arts in Kraków, May–June 1957
Bibliography
Marta Smolińska-Byczuk, The Young Mehoffer, Universitas, Kraków 2004, ill. 116, p. nlb.
Biography
He was a painter, printmaker, decorator, set designer, and educator. He studied painting from 1887 to 1894 at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków under W. Łuszczkiewicz and J. Matejko, while simultaneously studying law at Jagiellonian University. He continued his studies at Parisian institutions: the Académie Julian, the Académie Colarossi (under P.-J. Blanc and G. Courtois), and the École des Beaux-Arts (under L. Bonnat). After completing his studies, from 1894 to 1896, he spent time alternately in Poland, Paris, and Switzerland. He won first prize in an international competition for his stained-glass design for the collegiate church in Freiburg (the stained-glass project continued until 1934). In 1896, he settled in Kraków, and from 1900 onward, he was a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts. He was a member and co-founder of the Polish Artists’ Society “Sztuka” (1897). He painted decorative portraits, symbolic compositions, landscapes, and still lifes.
