Henryk Rodakowski began his career with a spectacular success at the Paris Salon. At the age of 29, he won a major gold medal for a portrait, in an era when history painting was held in the highest esteem. He spent twenty years in France, but all his life he painted scenes from Polish history. And although towards the end of his life he "saw no end to his brush", his last work was an excellent portrait of his daughter, Maria Wozniakowska. This is the story of the least known of the most acclaimed and talented Polish painters of the 19th century, an academic perfectionist, a grandmaster of portraiture creating in the spirit of Romanticism.

Short biography of Henryk Rod akowski
. Henryk Hipolit Rodakowski was born on 9 July 1823 in Lviv, in a tenement house on Ormianska Street, into a respectable, wealthy family. His father, Paweł Rodakowski, a well-known lawyer, took care of his son's future career by enrolling him in an elite Viennese school, the Theresianum, from where little Henryk tried to escape twice.

The next step towards the future was the study of law, which Rodakowski completed in accordance with his father's wishes, but he also received permission to study painting in the studios of famous Viennese painters. Already a newly qualified lawyer, in 1846 he set off to study in Paris and joined the atelier of the renowned academic and pedagogue, Léon Cogniet (1794-1880). He furthered his artistic education with his own studies at the Louvre. In the same year, Kamila von Salzgeber, whom he had showered with affection a few years earlier without reciprocity, married a wealthy banker, August Blühdorn. Henry sent his first oil self-portrait to his parents in Lemberg.

After completing his art education, Henryk Rodakowski returned briefly to Lvov, where he gained considerable fame for his Parisian style. In a makeshift studio, he received visitors and exhibited his works. At that time, he painted psychologically in-depth and technically perfect portraits of relatives and friends.

Rodakowski considered himself a historical painter, mastered the rules of composition, perfectly trained his workshop with multi-stage, painstaking preparatory work. He sketched each figure of a scene from nature as a nude, then arranged the matter or costume, creating a study-painting which he superimposed on the studied nude. He proceeded in this way with each character, even from a multi-plane composition.

Unfortunately, his historical works lost much in this detailed process. They never gained the depth and freedom that the artist achieved in portraiture. Here he abandoned his meticulous method to paint directly on the canvas, building up the solid with colour. It was portraiture that brought him international fame.

Paris Salon and portrait of General Henryk Dębiński
In 1852, especially for the Paris Salon, Rodakowski portrayed General Henryk Dębiński (1791-1864), a participant in the November Uprising and a hero of the Hungarian Revolution during the Spring of Nations, who was in Paris. Enthusiastic reviews of this historicised portrait of the great man were published by both 'all French critics' and Polish critics. The portrait was awarded the highest prize: a great gold medal of the first class.

A year later, Rodakowski once again dazzled audiences with his masterful Portrait of a Mother, about which Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) himself wrote in his diary 'I have seen a true masterpiece'.

Henryk Rodakowski and family
In November 1861. Henryk Rodakowski married his first love, Kamila Blühdorn, by then already a widow with two children and a considerable estate, in Paris. In June 1863, a daughter, Maria, was born to them; a year later, a son, Zygmunt. Due to their growing children, the Rodakowskis moved to Lviv. They also lived in Pałahicze, an estate belonging to the artist's older brother, Maksymilian, the Pałahicki Album was created here, and in their own estate Bortniki near Chodorow. They travelled to Paris, then Italy (where a portrait of his stepdaughter, Leonia Blühdorn, was painted) and Vienna.

In 1891, in Vienna, the artist paints a portrait of his daughter Maria ('Panna Maria Rodakowska') a year before her marriage to Marcjan Woźniakowski.

Panna Maria Rodakowska - portrait of his daughter
In Henryk Rodakowski's signed and dated painting, we can once again admire the aura of the extraordinary in a seemingly ordinary representation. As in the best of times, although he has already 'seen the end of the brush', the painter uses several colours in hundreds of shades to bring out his daughter's silhouette from the neutral background. The dark-haired twenty-eight-year-old Maria looks somewhat melancholy from the painting, with her head tilted slightly to one side. The whiteness of the dress, with its deep neckline and ruffles, is perfectly balanced by the large, dark stain of the bedspread on her right shoulder, held up by her right hand with a bouquet of roses. The stark contrast of qualities emphasises the warm colour of the girl's pale skin and the long glove on her left hand.

The last portrait of his only daughter before leaving the family home, it is also the last oil painting in the painter's artistic output. It was painted in Vienna, in the former studio of Hans Makart (1840-1884), a famous representative of Viennese academism. Despite Rodakowski's progressive blindness, this work is among his best canvases.

The portrait is exhibited in the Musaeum Lubomirscianum, or Lubomirski Museum, part of the Ossoliński National Institute in Lviv. After the occupation of the city by the Soviets in 1939 and the so-called reorganisation of Lviv museums (1940), which resulted in the nationalisation and dispersal of the collection, the painting by Henryk Rodakowski was transferred to the National Gallery of the City of Lviv (now the Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery).

Portraits painted by Henryk Rodakowski
Henryk Rodakowski created about fifty portraits, many of them representative likenesses of Polish aristocrats, but among the best are the private ones of people close to him: parents, siblings, aunts, children, friends. As a sensitive observer, he was excellent at reading the psyche of those he portrayed. One can sense the bond between the painter and the model created through a daily, personal relationship. Despite the apparent ordinariness, the unforced pose of the figures, the neutral background and the narrow range of colours, the artist was able to create fascinating representations.

"We stand amazed before such a great result, by such simple means obtained," the French columnist noted. "This portrait is life taken from nature and put into a frame. Looking at such a portrait, no special painterly issues come to mind; one is looking at a living person," wrote Stanisław Witkiewicz about one of the portraits.

Henryk Rodakowski in Krakow
In 1893, the Rodakowskis settled in Kraków at 3 Krupnicza Street. The painter became actively involved in the artistic life of the city. He became director of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts and chairman of the National Museum Committee. He also accepted the position of director of the School of Fine Arts.

On the night of 28 December 1894, he died unexpectedly, a few days after being appointed director. On the last day of the year, he was buried in Rakowicki Cemetery. At the beginning of the 20th century, a sculpture was placed on his gravestone, the head of Christ, made by the Lvov sculptor Antoni Popiel.