Zygmunt Rozwadowski

Polish painter Zygmunt Rozwadowski studied in Krákow at the School of Fine Arts and in München. He worked as a lecturer at the School of Industry in Lviv and produced theatrical scenery. In World War I he fought in the Polish Legions. After World War II Rozwadowski moved to Zakopane and painted mainly watercolors and oil paintings. His favorite subjects were scenes with horses and battle scenes, especially from the Napoleonic wars, although he also painted portraits and landscapes. Some of his paintings of the Polish Legion are exhibited in the National Museum of Krákow.

The submitted painting was titled Portrait of Misses W. and D. Czaykowski on horseback in a barrier jump. The Czaykowski family (later Czajkowski) was a prominent family of the landed gentry living in the Kamionka Wołoska region near Lviv in present-day Ukraine. The last owner of the mansion before World War II, Roman Czaykowski, had one son, Jan, and two daughters, Cecylia and Wanda, who were well-known horsewomen between the two World Wars and were probably portrayed in the picture. Wanda later married Leon Krzeczunowicz (1901-45), also a well-known horseman and later an underground fighter, who was shot in the Dora concentration camp after an escape attempt shortly before the camp’s closure in March 1945.