Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki

Jacques-Louis David was a major French representative of Neo-Classicism, a 19th-century style in European academic art profoundly influenced by the aesthetic order and monumentality of classical antiquity.[4] Between 1775 and 1780, David lived in Rome, where he was influenced by the paintings of Italian High Renaissance and early Baroque masters, prompting him to abandon the Rococo style, then dominant in France, in favor of an approach characterized, in the judgement of the art historian Kathryn Calley Galitz, by its precise contours, well-defined forms, and refined surfaces. David's style was also marked by a commitment to classical forms, echoing the visual language of Greek and Roman art, particularly following his visit to Naples in 1779.[5][6] A prolific portraitist, David pursued commissions from an array of patrons, not only the aristocracy, but also what the art historian Allison Lee Palmer has called the "enlightened middle class".[7] While the artist's political alliances shifted over time—he actively participated in the French Revolution before being appointed “First Painter to the Emperor” by Napoleon in 1804—David remained committed to the tenets of Neo-Classicism throughout his career.[5][6][Note 2]

Potocki reportedly first met David in Italy during the artist's 1779–1780 Grand Tour.[8] Potocki was a Polish nobleman who would later become an influential politician in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He traveled extensively around Europe, visiting Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany between 1772 and 1775.[9] In 1776, he married Aleksandra Lubomirska, a member of the aristocratic Polish Lubomirski family, and began his political activity in 1778 as a deputy to the Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from the Lublin Voivodeship.[9]

Potocki was a patriot and would serve as a general during the Polish–Russian War of 1792, a decisive military conflict that precipitated the Second Partition of Poland in 1793.[10] His contributions to the country were recognized by two state awards: the Order of Saint Stanislaus in 1780 and the Order of the White Eagle in 1781. Both distinctions would later be reflected in David's depiction of Potocki.[2] A strong advocate for public education, he served as co-founder of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Science (Polish: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk) in 1800 and the University of Warsaw in 1816.[11] Potocki was also an avid art collector with a strong interest in classical antiquity.[12] He translated History of the Art of Antiquity, a 1764 treatise by the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, into Polish. A comprehensive scholarly study of the history of Western ancient art, Winckelmann's book had a profound influence on the evolution of Neo-Classical art across Europe.[13]

Detail of the 1781 painting by David showing the artist's signature inscribed on the dog's collar

David depicts Potocki on horseback against a grey wall on top of which two classical columns are placed. Art historian Antoine Schnapper notes that the presence of straw beneath the horse's hooves could suggest a stable setting, while the "stately architecture" in the background might hint at an imaginary or idealized backdrop.[15] Potocki is depicted with no coat and only the blue sash of the Polish Order of the White Eagle, the country's highest civilian order, indicates his rank. He is attired in what Palmer characterized as the "finest" clothing: yellow trousers and a white shirt. Potocki is seen removing his hat in a cordial greeting to the viewer, as the horse lowers its head. In the lower left-hand corner, a dog can be observed barking at the horse.[7]

The portrait has been described as one of David's masterpieces,[1][2][3] and marking the return to prominence of equestrian portraiture in European late 18th-century painting.[19] The art historian Lorenz Eitner notes the influence of two 17th-century Flemish Baroque painters, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, on David's 1781 portrait, and argues that the painting "offers a premonition of the manner in which [David] was later to treat modern, national subjects".[20] According to Antoine Schnapper, the painting recalls van Dyck's 1634 equestrian portrait of Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano, a sketch of which David had completed prior to painting the Polish nobleman.[15][21]

Schnapper also concludes that the "horse's forequarters" correspond to a 17th-century tapestry fragment illustrating the story of Publius Decius Mus, a 4th-century BCE Roman consul known for sacrificing himself during the Second Latin War.[15][22] The tapestry, designed after a composition originally painted by Rubens in 1618, had been copied by David sometime prior to 1780 and later exhibited at the Louvre.[15] The importance of Rubens is also noted by the American art historian Robert Rosenblum who described the horse in Potocki's portrait as a "Rubensian stallion".[1] In examining the formal qualities of the composition, the French scholar of 18th-century art Charlotte Guichard highlights the atypical placement of the artist's signature found on the dog's golden collar in the bottom left corner of the painting. She suggests that by "breaking dynamically into the space of representation, David's glittering name shines forth, catching the light and the viewer's attention".[23]

Scholars have also addressed the political resonance of the painting. According to Palmer, the portrait might symbolize the "prerevolutionary debate" of whether the nobility were "superior merely by blood or also of mind".[7] Analyzing Eastern European representation in the late 18th-century Western art, historian Larry Wolff considers that the motif of horsemanship alluded to the "taming and harnessing" of Eastern Europe more broadly, in common with other works of art from the 1780s. He observes that "the Polish nobleman astride a perfectly poised, intensely muscled horse, head bent in submission beneath a dramatic mane" is depicted with great discipline.[24] Moreover, the French art historian Philippe Bordes positions the painting alongside David's other contemporary portraits of prominent social figures—including the 1788 depiction of the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze—created by an artist he asserts was "determined to engage his talent to climb the social ladder".[25]

David, Belisarius Begging for Alms, 1781 (Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille) was exhibited alongside Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki at the Paris Salon in 1781

In his 1930 biographical study of the artist, art historian Richard Cantinelli noted that David began working on the Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki in Rome and departed for Paris on July 17, 1780. In Paris, he finished the painting and displayed it at the 1781 Salon.[26] The exhibition was David's Salon debut and Potocki's portrait was shown alongside Belisarius Begging for Alms, Saint Roch Interceding with the Virgin for the Plague-Stricken,The Funeral Games of Patroclus, and a composition titled A Woman Suckling Her Child, all of which were praised by the French Enlightenment philosopher and prominent writer Denis Diderot.[3] When discussing Potocki's portrait, Diderot singled out David's light color palette, which stood in contrast to history paintings completed by the artist during the same period.[15]

[David] displays the grand manner in everything he does. He has soul, his heads have expression without affectation, his attitudes are noble and natural, he draws, he knows how to arrange drapery and make handsome folds, his color is beautiful (...)

— Denis Diderot, 1781[27]

Although Belisarius Begging for Alms has received the highest amount of praise from contemporary critics,[28] Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki has since been described as one of the paintings that "cemented David's success".[29] David's debut at the 1781 Salon proved to be an important artistic milestone and helped to establish him as "the most promising painter of the rising generation".[30] Following its display in Paris, the portrait was sent to Warsaw, although the precise timeline of its movements remains uncertain.[Note 4] Existing records indicate that it was transferred to Wilanów Palace, a former royal residence near Warsaw owned by Potocki, on December 5, 1801.[18] The Baroque palace and its accompanying gardens, originally built for King John III Sobieski and his wife Marie Casimire Louise de La Grange d'Arquien in 1681–1696, was inherited by Izabela Lubomirska, the sister of Potocki's wife Aleksandra, in 1778.[31]

David's Portrait of Count Stanislas Kostka Potocki on display at Wilanów Palace in 2019 following conservation

The ownership of Wilanów was transferred to Potocki in 1799, who would amass a significant collection of European and East Asian art. David's portrait of Potocki was placed on the eastern wall of the Great Hall (now known as the White Hall) of the palace. in 1805, the collection was officially opened to the public, becoming one of the first public art museums in Poland.[18][32] In 1831, amid concerns of potential Russian pillaging due to the November Uprising—an armed insurrection that had erupted on 29 November 1830 against the occupying Russian Empire—the portrait of Potocki was relocated to Warsaw for safekeeping, where it remained until 1834.[18]

Placed on public display at the palace until 1864, it was then moved to private quarters to become part of the Potocki family portrait collection put together by August Potocki, Stanisław's grandson. In 1877, Aleksandra Potocka, August's widow, published an illustrated catalogue of the Wilanów collection, which included a reproduction of David's portrait of Stanisław Kostka Potocki.[18] The ownership of the palace and the collection was subsequently passed to the Branicki family in 1892.[15] In 1913, it was featured in David's retrospective titled David et ses Eleves at the Petit Palais in Paris.[28] In 1932, the portrait, along with several other works by David, was shown at the Exhibition of French Art 1200–1900, an extensive survey show of French art across seven centuries, organized at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.[33] In 1937, it was exhibited at Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris.[34]

In 1944, during World War II, Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki was looted by the Nazi forces. According to surviving records, the painting was stolen by a group led by the Wehrmacht General Eberhard Kinzel in December 1944, who first transported it to Świdnica and then to Germany.[34][35][36]^: 396 During Jacques-Louis David's bi-centenary exhibition in Paris in 1948, art historian Douglas Cooper described the portrait of Potocki as one of the "important works" missing from the show.[37] In 1952, Soviet authorities informed the Polish government (by then the USSR-aligned Polish People's Republic), that they had retrieved numerous works from the Wilanów collection as part of their wider post-war restitution campaign that spanned across Germany.[36]^: 397 According to Stanisław Lorentz, who was the director of the National Museum in Warsaw at the time, the initial set of works was repatriated to Poland in the same year. The remaining works, which included the portrait by David, were returned during an official ceremony held at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1956.[36]^: 398 Subsequently, the portrait was placed in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw.[2] In 1990, after the fall of communism in Poland, the work was transferred back to Wilanów, then part of the National Museum in Warsaw, and placed on public display.[2] In 1995, the palace became an independent national museum and in 2013, it was renamed the Museum of King John III's Palace at Wilanów. In 2016, after undergoing extensive conservation, the painting was moved from the North Hall to the White Hall, its original location during the early 1800s where David's painting remains on view as of April 2023.[2]

The painting has been often reproduced in print, most famously in the 1880 publication by Jacques-Louis-Jules David, which resulted in renewed interest in David's portrait of Potocki at the end of the 19th century.[18] Moreover, several copies of the painting are said to have been completed over time, including those painted by David himself. Some scholars proposed that the painting originally commissioned by Ferdinand IV could be distinct from another work intended for Potocki, as suggested by the existence of a receipt the artist provided to Potocki on 30 June 1780, and follow-up correspondence between the two dated 10 July 1780.[18]

In an 1877 ledger from Wilanów Palace, Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki is described as "a study by David" made in 1781 which was bought later in Paris by Elżbieta Izabela Lubomirska for her daughter Aleksandra Potocka, prompting some researchers to speculate that the portrait currently in the Wilanów collection might itself be David's copy of the original work. The ledger also makes no mention of the 1781 Paris Salon, where the original painting is believed to have been first exhibited.[Note 5] Existing records further point to versions of the work made by other artists, including a 1791 copy by the Polish artist Franciszek Smuglewicz, which has since been lost, as well as one made in or around 1905 by the painter Wacław Pawliszak. Assertions about the existence of purported additional copies of the portrait have also emerged in the 21st century, though these claims have not yet been verified by researchers.[18][Note 6]