format:25 x 19 cm, in light passe-partout,heliogravure (visible plate imprint), cardboard signed and titled on the plate l.d .
Under the composition signature of the artistic lithography workshop " Meisenbach Riffarth & Co".
The graphic comes from a portfolio illustrating Sienkiewicz's works published in 1898 and is reproduced on wikipedia.pl
Hania - novella by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Written in December 1875, published in January 1876, it tells the story of a love triangle (Hania, narrator Henryk, Selim Mirza). Hania, along with The Old Servant and Selim Mirza, make up the so-called "little trilogy." Literary scholars note that the way the world is presented in "Hania" is nothing like Western European romance or Polish traditions, and against the backdrop of the writing production of the time, it is distinguished by its originality. The plot of unfulfilled love is reminiscent in its mood of the works of Leo Tolstoy and some short stories by Ivan Turgenev.
Georg Meisenbach was a German engraver and inventor of the autotype. In 1883 Meisenbach & Co. merged with Heinrich Riffarth & Co. to form Meisenbach Riffarth & Company, a well-known European graphic design firm.
Heliogravure (gr.helio + gravure) - a type of graphic intaglio printing technique, similar to aquatint, involving the photographic transfer of an image onto a metal plate (usually copper) and etching with photosensitive emulsion so that the brightest areas create the shallowest recesses. Invented in 1879.Printing is done in a special hand press. Heliogravure, which was widespread in the 19th century, was later supplanted by rotogravure, as heliogravure is an expensive and very time-consuming method. Heliogravure is used only when it is necessary to create a small number of copies of very high quality.
Piotr Stachiewicz (born October 29, 1858 in Nowosiółki Gościnne in Podolia, died April 14, 1938 in Cracow) - Polish painter and illustrator.In 1877-1883 he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Cracow under Jan Matejko, Władysław Łuszczkiewicz and Florian Cynk. He continued his studies in 1882-1885 in Munich (Academy of Fine Arts - Techn. Malklasse from October 21, 1882).
Since 1885 he lived in Cracow, created religious, historical, genre paintings and portraits.