Józef and Feliks Smuglewicz in the Shadow of Franciszek Smuglewicz

Abstract

The article focusses on the last two generations of the Smuglewicz line of painters. It presents new and significant information concerning the family of Filip Smuglewicz and his wife Brygida Glińska, who in the early nineteenth century relocated from Warsaw to Veisiejai, Lithuania. Their son Józef Smuglewicz (1785–1828) trained under his uncle, Professor Franciszek Smuglewicz, going on to teach drawing in Pastovys (modern-day Belarus) and in Kaunas, Lithuania. In 1814, Józef married Eleonora Bielkiewicz at the church in Vandžiogala. Their children would be the last generation of Smuglewiczes inhabiting lands in Lithuania, the Courland Governorate (modern-day western Latvia) and Ukraine. Józef’s son Feliks Antoni Smuglewicz (1824–1867), meanwhile, would become the last painter in the Smuglewicz dynasty. Having finished school in Kaunas, he studied painting at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts (1847–1852) to later return to Lithuania and live and work chiefly in the vicinity of Kaunas and at the leased Neu-Bergfried estate in Courland. Due to various historical circumstances, his name as an artist quickly fell into obscurity. His output has not been studied and many of his works were incorrectly attributed to his famous uncle Franciszek Smuglewicz. Based on source analysis, the article discusses the biographies of Józef and Feliks Smuglewicz and concentrates on identifying and attributing their works. Simultaneously, to a certain extent, it also ends up verifying and correcting the body of work of Franciszek Smuglewicz.