Everyone associates Jan Matejko with huge canvases filled with dozens of figures brilliantly painted in historical clashes and landmark moments of Polish history. But can we imagine the great painter as a tourist on holiday?

Master of Polish painting - Jan Matejko

Jan Matejko (1838-1893), Poland's most recognisable and universally respected painter, a name which the average Pole unmistakably associates with painting with a capital M. The creator of the national school of history painting, a consistent pursuer of the great mission to show the former glory and splendour of the Republic of Poland, and to revive faith in the rebirth of the homeland and the regaining of independence of the state which did not exist as a result of the partitions. A master, a bard of national art, who is all the more difficult to imagine on holiday... in Turkey.

But let us try. Let's take a look at Matejko in a more intimate, private version, this time creating for himself, who - like today's tourist - immortalises the most interesting views and frames "in memory", although by different means than today.

Jan Matejko as a guest at the Gropplers' in Turkey

In 1872, Jan Matejko and his wife Teodora travelled to Constantinople (Istanbul), where the couple spent several weeks. They were invited and hosted by the artist's cousin, Henryk Groppler (1822-1887), a Polish entrepreneur who had been successfully doing business in Ottoman Turkey for years.

The Gropplers received Polish emigrants and great artists in their sumptuous villa in Bebek and actively supported Polish underground organisations. Their residence was called the informal embassy of Poland at a time when the country did not exist on the map of Europe.

Groppler's villa was located in the Bebek district, now administratively part of Istanbul's Beşiktaş district on the European side of the city, picturesquely situated on the Bosphorus Strait, with magnificent views from its shores.

Jan Matejko's sketches from Beşiktaş

The encounter with oriental culture, architecture and nature could not have left the artist indifferent. Quick sketches of the keen observer have survived, documenting the bustling city with its inhabitants, bazaars, backstreets, waterfront and remarkable buildings. Although he seems to have stepped out of his role as a painter creating for the betterment of hearts for the duration of his holiday, he did not stop being a creator, even on holiday.

View of Bebek - the only landscape in Jan Matejko's oeuvre

Matejko then painted the only known landscape in his artistic output. Without staffage, i.e. human figures, savouring the holiday day and the sheer beauty of the sparkling blue waves of the mighty Bosphorus. The small painting is more of a quick, impressionistic sketch, made for himself as a souvenir of his journey.

We look with the painter through the villa window at the boat bobbing on the water just ahead. Further away, in the background, we see a small bay, or harbour, with moored boats. To the right of the painting, the tree-lined shore with its buildings and the soaring minaret of the mosque rises up a high escarpment disappearing on the horizon on the other side of the canvas.

Jan Matejko, View of Bebek near Constantinople, 1872, oil, canvas We can follow the master's light, quick brushstrokes, so different from those of smoothly finished historical works. The view of Bebek reveals Matejko as a sensitive observer of reality, with ease and mastery transferring to the sub-painting the fleeting moment of a hot day in a picturesque corner of the world. The landscape is all the more interesting because it is not a frequent subject in the painter's oeuvre, rarely even appearing as a backdrop to events.

The artist often places historical scenes in interiors or urban settings, emphasising the identification of cities with characteristic buildings, giving vent to his love of historical detail and his fierceness as a documentarian.

In many compositions, nature is limited to the representation of the sky. An anonymous landscape appears in several paintings from the series History of Civilisation in Poland. Between 1908 and 1912, the Picture Gallery of the City of Lvov (now the Boris Voznytskyi National Art Gallery of Lvov), which had been established a few years earlier, purchased, among other canvases by Matejko, the " View of Bebek " .

Other "Turkish" works by Jan Matejko

During his stay in Istanbul, Matejko also painted a classical portrait of his cousin Henrik, a reproduction of which will become, instead of a photograph, Groppler's visiting card.

Jan Matejko also created another painting with the Bosphorus in the lead role - the composition Drowned in the Bosphorus , in which he depicted a female half-act for the first time (he repeated it in the second version of the painting years later), illustrating the story of the beautiful Zuleika of the hodja harem. According to a legend heard by Matejko, the woman betrayed the ruler with some officer of Polish origin, for which she was sentenced to drowning in the Bosphorus by eunuchs.

Malicious people saw in the appearance of the drowning woman a resemblance to his wife Theodora, but that is a separate story.
The Matejkos, like typical travellers, captivated by the exotic otherness and charm of their Turkish holiday, also brought back traditional souvenirs, such as oriental textiles, napkins and curtains. These items are now in the collection of the museum - the Jan Matejko House in Kraków.