The Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków held a joint opening of two exhibitions, entitled ‘Masterpieces from the Lanckoroński Collection’ and ‘The New Royal Treasury’, on 30 June 2022.
Amongst those paintings from the Lanckoroński Collection which after the Second World War were sold on the European art market, are three, kindly lent by their present owners for the first of the two exhibitions. They are: Saint George and the Dragon by Paolo Uccello (owned presently by the National Gallery in London), acquired originally by Count Karol Lanckoroński prior to 1892; Portrait of a 21 year-old Woman by a follower of Bartholomaeus Bruyn the Elder (today the property of the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill), purchased by the count in 1885 at an auction of the possessions of his close acquaintance, the artist Hans Makart, who died in 1884; and A Group in a Park by Barend Graat, earlier in the collection of the last King of Poland, Stanislas August (now belonging to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam). All three were amongst the most outstanding works which once belonged to the Viennese collection of the Lanckoroński family.
Guests were also invited to visit the Wawel’s third exhibition, entitled ‘Wyczółkowski Found’, presenting the painting A Highland Girl, sometimes also called A Country Lass in a Yellow Shawl, which was stolen during the Second World War having been earlier donated to the Royal Castle as part of the Wawel Foundation of Count Leon Piniński, founded in 1931.
A book financed by the Lanckoronski Foundation on the history of the Lanckoroński Collection, with emphasis on the paintings in the exhibition.
The director of the Wawel Royal Castle, Professor Andrzej Betlej.
The opening of the exhibitions.
The three paintings formerly belonging to the Lanckoroński Collection:
Saint George and the Dragon by Paolo Uccello (centre),
Portrait of a 21 year-old Woman
by a follower of Bartholomaeus Bruyn the Elder (left),
and A Group in a Park by Barend Graat (right).