Photographic Portraits of Henryk Siemiradzki

Abstract

The article presents an overview of the official photographic likenesses of Henryk Siemiradzki (1843–1902) produced throughout the artist’s lifetime by professional photographers and distributed in public circulation as original photographic prints and as print or photomechanical reproductions. Over Siemiradzki’s three-decade-long career, there were about 15 photographic portraits of the painter in official circulation. Most of these were taken in Polish studios, chiefly in Warsaw but also in Lviv, Krakow, Szczawnica and Łódź. Only two photographic portraits of Siemiradzki by foreign photographers have been identified. The overwhelming majority of the artist’s official portraits adhere to the traditional manner of a conventional likeness against a neutral background with no attributes of the artist’s profession in sight. The artist’s first official portrait photograph was published by the Warsaw-based weekly Kłosy in January 1874 following the success of his painting The Harlot. The last portrait of Siemiradzki to enter public circulation is a 1902 post-mortem photo taken in Strzałków. The article was conceived as an iconographic source pool to aid in the study of the functioning of artists’ photographic portraits in the Polish art market and as a catalyst for further research on the role of the nascent medium in image-creation and self-representation.