I Have Seen a True Masterpiece

“I Have Seen a True Masterpiece: Rodakowski’s Portrait of a Mother. This picture is a worthy successor to the one which so dazzled me at the exhibition,” Eugėne Delacroix noted in his Diary on April 8, 1853, having visited the Paris studio of Henryk Rodakowski. The portrait, painted during the artist’s stay his hometown of Lwów, was later presented at the Salon and lauded by the French critics. The artist never sold the work. It was only sold in 1937 by his son, Zygmunt. Through the concerted efforts of Marian Minich, who was the director of the J. and K. Bartoszewicz Municipal Museum of History and Art, the piece was purchased for the Łódź collection. Taking the post in 1934, Minich set out a plan for the museum’s development. He marked out two aims which he thought were of key significance. The first was expanding the modern art collection, the second was gathering nineteenth and twentieth century works of Polish art of major artistic valor. Through his persistent efforts, in the 1930s the museum’s collections grew with pieces that are, at present, the most valuable part of the Polish art collection. Among these acquisitions we ought to mention Jacek Malczewski’s Visions, Aleksander Gierymski’s Man in a Red Tuxedo, and Piotr Michałowski’s Napoleon on Horseback, as well as Leon Wyczółkowski’s Fisherman and Self-Portrait with Palette, and Jan Matejko’s Portrait of My Son on Horseback. These and other priceless works from our collection will be on display at our exhibition.