Franciszek Ksawery Lampi, also known as Franz Xaver Lampi (22 January 1782 – 22 July 1852), was a Polish Romantic painter born in Austria of ethnic Italian background. He was associated with the aristocratic circle of the late Stanisław II Augustus, the last Polish king before the foreign

partitions of Poland The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 12 ...

. Lampi settled in Warsaw around 1815 at the age of 33, and established himself as the leading landscape and portrait artist in

Congress Poland Congress Poland, Congress Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It w ...

soon after Napoleon's defeat in Russia.

Early life

Lampi was the son of renowned Italian historical painter Johann Baptist von Lampi the Elder from Romeno (b.1751) known as Jan Chrzciciel Lampi in Poland, who was invited to Warsaw by King Stanisław II August in 1786 when Franz (Franciszek) was 4 years old (or between 1788 and 1791, according to different source). He was born in Klagenfurt, where his father worked on commissions for the Austrian court. He was the younger brother of

Johann Baptist von Lampi Johann, typically a male given name, is the German form of ''Iohannes'', which is the Latin form of the Greek name ''Iōánnēs'' (), itself derived from Hebrew name ''Yochanan'' () in turn from its extended form (), meaning "Yahweh is Gracious" ...

(b.1775), also a portrait painter in the Lampi family; and was initially taught painting by his father, before entering the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the studios of

Hubert Maurer Hubert Maurer (10 June 1738, Bonn - 10 December 1818, Vienna) was a German painter, graphic artist and art professor. Life and work He began as a student of the Bavarian court painter, Johann Georg Winter (1707-1770). He continued his educatio ...

and Heinrich Füger. When he was 15 years old, the Lampi family relocated to St. Petersburg in 1797 during the third and final partition of Poland, enticed by an extremely generous offer from the

Tsar Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East Slavs, East and South Slavs, South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''Caesar (title), caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" i ...

. Estranged from his father, and disinherited, Franciszek Lampi left St. Petersburg at the age of 32 after the Napoleonic Wars, and settled in Warsaw a year later in 1815. The already well-established reputation of his father in Poland as well as his own Polish childhood helped him blend into society.

Later career

He exhibited at Warsaw Salons in 1828, 1838, 1841 and 1845; and opened a small private art school in 1841. Lampi painted mostly aristocratic portraits and specialized in the Romantic depictions of attractive women. What's more, he produced fantastic landscapes and seascapes inspired by the new intellectual forces of the Age of Enlightenment and the philosophical evolution of

Romanticism in Poland Romanticism in Poland, a literary, artistic and intellectual period in the evolution of Polish culture, began around 1820, coinciding with the publication of Adam Mickiewicz's first poems in 1822. It ended with the suppression of the January 1863 ...

. His art style was similar to the work of Italian

Salvator Rosa Salvator Rosa (1615 –1673) is best known today as an Italian Baroque painter, whose romanticized landscapes and history paintings, often set in dark and untamed nature, exerted considerable influence from the 17th century into the early 19th ...

and Claude Joseph Vernet of France. He gave art classes in his studio, but also traveled. In 1817–1819 he was teaching in Kraków. Among his most notable students were Wojciech Korneli Stattler and Piotr Michałowski. In 1823 he went to

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...

on commission, in 1830 to Vilna. After the

November Uprising The November Uprising (1830–31), also known as the Polish–Russian War 1830–31 or the Cadet Revolution, was an armed rebellion in the heartland of partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. The uprising began on 29 November 1830 in W ...

against the Russian Empire he spent a few years in Wrocław (Breslau) before returning to Warsaw in 1836. In 1840 he visited Dresden, Berlin and Munich – known as Franz Xaver Ferdinand von Lampi in German. In 1850 Lampi returned to Warsaw where he died in 1852 at the age of 70, said to have been a possible victim of the

cholera Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and ...

outbreak. His work can be found at the National Museum of Poland and its branches including Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań as well as in the

Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery The Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery is an art museum based in Kaunas, Lithuania, which is a branch of the M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum The M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum is a group of museums based in Kaunas, Lithuania. It is prim ...

(

Kaunas Kaunas (; ; also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the largest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Trakai ...

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

Selected paintings

Notes and references

External links

Representative works
at ''Zascianek.pl''
Franciszek Ksawery Lampi.
Biography, at ''Artyzm.com'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Lampi, Franciszek Ksawery 1782 births 1852 deaths 18th-century Austrian people 19th-century Austrian people 19th-century Polish painters 19th-century Austrian male artists Polish romantic painters Austrian romantic painters Austrian nobility Polish people of Austrian descent Polish people of Italian descent Artists from Klagenfurt Polish male painters Romantic painters