Dimensions: 84 x 40 cm
signed and dated p.g.: 'Jan Styka | 1890'.
described on a fragment of canvas wrapped on the reverse of the painting loom: '(...)89_ | (...)83_', described on the loom with the number: '65', round wax customs stamp with the description: 'H.Z.A. | L [double-headed Austrian eagle] S | KRAKAU'.
Biography
Studied at the Vienna academy, in Rome and at the Cracow School of Fine Arts under Jan Matejko. Since 1900 he lived permanently in Paris. He was a member of the Academy of St. Luke in Rome. He painted portraits, genre scenes, as well as religious paintings and large historical compositions, maintained in the spirit of academic painting. He created series of paintings illustrating literary works - Homer's Odyssey, Sienkiewicz's Quo vadis. He was the initiator and co-author of several panoramas, of which 'Raclawice' (1893-94; now in Wroclaw, formerly in Lvov), painted jointly with Wojciech Kossak (and others), and 'Golgotha' (1896; now in Los Angeles), painted jointly with Jan Stanislawski and Tadeusz Popiel, have survived to this day. Fragments of the cut-up 'Battle of Sibiu' (1897) appeared several times at auctions in Warsaw in 1991.