The book presented here is the result of many years of interest and research into Müntz's work by Elżbieta Budzińska.

The author of the presented work, Johann Heinrich Müntz (1727-1798), is an extraordinary figure. By the time he arrived in Poland, he had made numerous journeys around Europe and to Palestine, and had spent a longer, creative stay in England. He also had a variety of professional experience, ranging from artistic, military and economic issues to that of a metallurgical engineer - as the author of a treatise on the smelting of coloured metals. He appeared in Poland in 1778 and between 1781 and 1783 travelled with Prince Stanisław Poniatowski, nephew of King Stanisław August, to his Ukrainian estates. Here he encountered a previously unknown world, which apparently fascinated him. The result of these travels is a collection of more than 300 drawings preserved to this day, with extensive descriptions.

Müntz was the first artist in the 18th century to travel the roads of Poland, Lithuania, Polesie, Podolia, Volhynia, and finally Moldavia, recording so extensively the everyday life and work of the people, the landscape of these lands and the architectural monuments. He was the first to draw the Białowieża Forest - the famous 'portrait' of the bison, the Pinsk marshes, the poohs on the Dnieper, and finally the villages, chutors and towns, inns, floating bridges, barrows and wells on the steppe or flax and watermelon crops. It is a remarkable document of the times, which was appreciated by posterity. As early as the 1860s, Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski announced the publication of one of the albums of J.H. Müntz's Picturesque Journeys through Old Poland and planned to make illustrations himself for this publication using the etching technique.

In an elaborate introduction, the author of the study presented an extensive biography of the artist, with particular emphasis on his stay of several years in Poland. She presented the complicated story of the journey of his drawings and notes, in time collected in three albums, characterising his drawing and writing work. In addition, she annotated the 18th-century source text with scholarly commentaries.

Of the three albums, two are held in the collection of the State Historical Museum in Moscow and one in the Drawing Room of the University Library in Warsaw. It should be noted that the publication of the entire material would not have been possible if it had not been for the acquisition of scans of the two Moscow albums in 2017 by the President of the Polish Institute of World Art Studies, Professor Jerzy Malinowski, who also patronised this publication. The developing cooperation between the Polish and Russian scientific communities in recent years, which resulted in the book presented to the readers, was interrupted by Russia's barbaric attack on Ukraine. Time will tell whether scientists will be able to return to joint research in the future.

Due to the incredible scientific value of the historical source - drawing and description - the Polonica Institute decided to publish it in a rare format. The manuscript in French was brilliantly translated into Polish by Piotr Herbich - the Moscow albums, and by Mrs Henryk Martyniuk - the Warsaw album, and the Polish text was then translated into English and Russian. These trilingual texts are accompanied by facsimiles of drawings and original descriptions - an incredible source of knowledge about the 18th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. We are convinced that this monumental publication will contribute to the deepening of research into the history of Stanislav Poland.

The publication was presented on the portal Histmag.org .

In March 2023, the jury of the XXX edition of the Eastern Review Prize for 2022 awarded Dr Elżbieta Budzińska the prize in the 'Editing of Sources' category for editing the volume Johann Heinrich Muntz: Picturesque Journeys through Poland 1780-1784 .

Authors: Johann Heinrich Muntz, Elżbieta Budzińska (editing)

Language editing: Grażyna Raj

Year of publication: 2022

Co-publisher: Polish Institute of World Art Studies

Number of pages: 838

Binding: hardback

Format: 225 x 305

ISBN: 978-83-66172-58-6 (Polish Studies Institute)
978-83-66758-14-8 (Polish Institute of World Art Studies)