Kanuty Rusiecki (1800-1860) was a Polish painter born in the Vilnius region. He received his education at the Bernardine school in Traszkūnai, then from 1816 at Vilnius University, first at the Faculties of Law and Mathematics and Physics, and from 1818 at the Faculty of Literature and Liberal Arts in the class of Professor J. Rustem (painting) and Professor K. Jelski (sculpture). At that time, he had the opportunity to establish contacts with the secret organisations that were active at his university, so he was able to meet Adam Mickiewicz. Luckily, however, he did not share the fate of his colleagues arrested during Novosilcov's investigation, as he left to study abroad in Paris in 1821. He stayed on the Seine for a year, studying in the studio of G. Guillon-Lethière, learning about the contemporary painting of P. Prudhon, P.N.Guérin, A. Girodet, or T. Géricault and E. Delacroix. During his Parisian studies, he decided to go to Rome, where he remained for almost 10 years. On the banks of the Tiber, he studied at the French Academy, the Academy of St Luke, and met V. Camuccini and B. Thorvaldsen. There, he formed an "association of Polish artists" with other Polish artists, W. K. Stattler from Krakow, A. Kokular from Warsaw, J. Trojanowski from Vilnius, J. Miszewski from Vilnius and J.I. Maszkowski from Lvov, which formed the first romantic programme of Polish painting, which was to be "the heart and fire of the nation" (as he wrote to J. Staniszewski in 1823). The historical paintings created in this circle have not survived; it is known only from their correspondence that they were interested in themes from the Polish history of the Piast and early Jagiellonian period. Rusiecki, however, left numerous landscape studies of Rome, often created in the open air with oil on canvas, in the spirit of the works of other Roman landscape painters of the time: Ch. Eckersberg, F. Catel, I. Caffi, S. Szczedrin, C. Corot and M. Granet. It is the largest and most outstanding collection of landscape paintings from the 1820s in Polish art. He also created portraits of the Italian people, striking in their psychological depth - such as Head of a Laughing Italian. He left Rome before the end of 1829 and returned to Vilnius, where he taught at the Institute of Nobility from 1834. He decorated Vilnius churches, including the Cathedral and the Church of St. Theresa. Theresa Church. Trained in Rome in observing the people and nature, he painted the environs of Vilnius and its inhabitants, e.g. Head of the Jew, Harvester, Prayer at the Gates of Dawn. He even went on walking trips to the Bialowieza Forest to sketch from nature. Together with W. Dmochowski and K. Jelski, he designed the establishment of an academy in Vilnius, which, despite the governor's approval in 1858, was not established. Rusiecki was the first Polish painter to come into contact with Romantic French art, but above all he transferred the Romantic postulate of art "moving the heart" from the pages of literature to the canvases of painting, which he infected with his colleagues from Krakow, including Stattler, Matejko's teacher. Thus, the idea of Romantic Polish art was forged abroad, in Rome, and only by learning about its roots can we fully understand the fluctuations and migrations of a certain Vilnius idea of nation and art, which shaped the paradigm of our culture in the 19th century. Rusiecki died in 1860 in Vilnius and was buried in the Bernardine Cemetery. His tombstone was recently restored with funding from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.