Lost painting found in Kraków after 77 years

Jan Maurits Quinkhardt's The Drawing Lesson from 1762 has been just put on display at Wawel Royal Castle. The canvas was found in Kraków in 2022 after it had been stolen from the castle during WWII.

"This work found its way here under very peculiar circumstances which reflect an example of civic conduct," director of the Wawel Royal Castle Professor Andrzej Betlej said on Friday (May 19).

Quinkhardt's The Drawing Lesson - which depicts two young aspiring painters - was brought to Wawel before WWII as part of Professor Jerzy Mycielski's collection. At the time, it could be found in the castle's inventory under the number 1630. During the war, however, the painting was stolen.

"It was in Poland, in a private collection," Prof. Betlej said. "After the owner's death, unaware of the painting's history - that it was lost and missing - the heir wanted to sell it. That's how the picture ended up at Krakowski Dom Aukcyjny," he added.

"A client brought a part of his collection he had inherited for appraisal and potential sale," said Ryszard Lachman of Krakowski Dom Aukcyjny. "During the course of enquiry, we found out one of the works was a registered war loss - we notified Wawel Royal Castle about it. Their astonishment was huge," Lachman added.

It did not take long to identify the painting - it still had the inventory numbers referring to Prof. Mycielski's collection, the description and dimensions were also correct.

"We had no doubts," Prof. Betlej said. "When the owner realized this work was looted during the war, he immediately returned it to Wawel," the castle director stressed. He added that a similar situation had taken place in 2020, when a missing watercolor painting returned to Wawel. It was brought by a person who was clearing her grandma's apartment and found the painting along with signatures suggesting its rightful place was at Wawel Castle.

Jan Maurits Quinkhardt was a disciple of his father, Julius Henricus Quinkhardt; he also learned from Krzysztof Lubieniecki, a Polish Baroque painter living in Amsterdam. He began his painting career in 1723. He mainly painted portraits, usually half-lenght portaits.

"He opened a drawing schools in his home and had several students. The painting most likely shows one of such lessons, taking place under the watchful eye of the painter himself. It refers to a 1757 composition from Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, at which Julius Quinkhardt depicted himself and his son Jan Maurits during a drawing lesson," Wawel Royal Castle said in a statement.

Apart from The Drawing Lesson, there are other, new paintings from the castle collection to be admired, including works of Titian, Brueghel, and Bordon.

"The Wawel collection has been enriched last year by top-tier exhibits. I'm mainly thinking about Allegory of Love by Titian, whose work from the turn of the 15th century brought him worldwide recognition, and who is still considered one of the greatest creators of history," Poland's Minister of Culture and National Heritage Piotr Gliński said on Friday.

Allegory of Love can be seen at the Senators' Hall. The painting is a variant of Titian’s Allegory of Married Love in the Musée du Louvre, dated to 1530–1540.

At display there are also paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Paris Bordon, items from the Sanguszko family collection, as well as porcelain figures, including a real-size Lisa which is one of the only four preserved copies that originated from the royal manufacture in Meissen (Meissen porcelain or Meissen china was the first European hard-paste porcelain - edit.).