The Late Birth of a Great Artist: Piotr Michałowski’s Sketchbook of 1832

The book covers a very special moment in the life of Piotr Michałowski (1800–55), the most outstanding painter of Polish Romanticism. In his early life, Michałowski built a career as a technocrat and later became head of the state-owned heavy industry. At the time, he proved himself a brilliant amateur salon painter. During the anti-Russian uprising of 1830–31, he was responsible for producing weapons for the Polish army, and would later head for France to pursue the arts. This change in his min