Antoni Herliczka’s Vicissitudes of Life the Polish Painter of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The painter Antonius Johannes Herliczka, actually: Herdlitzka (in the archives he is also called Herlitzka, Cherliczka, Erliczka, Jerliczka, Irliczka, Herliczko, Erliczko, Herlicki, and Irlicki), was born ca. 1720 and died after 1792.

He came from the Habsburg monarchy (from the Bohemia) and bore the seven-club crown coat-of-arms (usurpation?). In the years of 1749-1751 (1753?) he lived in Warszawa. He was the court painter of Jan Klemens Branicki (1753-1771), then Izabella Branicka née Poniatowska, a widow and life tenant. From 1753 on he lived in Białystok, and from 1754 on in the newly built house at Nowe Miasto street, granted to him on 8^th July 1771. In 1779 he took out a lease on aldermanship of Haćki near Brańsk, got married on 17^th February 1754 in Białystok to Marianna Paszkowska (1740-1768), a daughter of a post office secretary. They had 7 (8) children. He was a member of the Archfraternity of the Holy Trinity at a Białystok church.

Until 1749 he worked as a journeyman with Georg Wilhelm Josef Neunhertz. He himself made painting works, rarely helped by “painters.” In later years his oldest son, Józef Henryk (baptised on 25^th January 1757 in Białystok), helped him. I. Branicka sent him in 1781 to Warszawa for a several-month training with Vincenzo Brenna.

Herliczka pursued above all wall painting. He also painted easel paintings, especially frontons and portraits, and realised other assignments (e.g. he decorated carriages). He designed sculptures and stuccoes, but did not sign his works. Few frescoes have been preserved (mezzo fresco, and completed by al secco), and still fewer Herliczka's easel paintings show him as a prominent and proficient artist in terms of technique.

Herliczka's work is part of the painting of the Habsburg countries (this line in which one notices the influence of Venetian art); in terms of its style it belongs to late Baroque. It is characterised by light and refined colours (economical with the game of colours, at times monochromatic; the whole interior is supposed to be a unity in terms of its colour), and a clear composition (noticed especially in church paintings, where vaults are open to heavens with the Holy Trinity hung among clouds and surrounded by angels). In wall paintings there is a delicate rococo ornament, imitating white stuccoes, and with time more and more resembling antiquity. Herliczka's painting is characterised by free brush strokes, impasto facture, especially spectacular in the part of lights (bright spots), and some kind of nonchalance in the presentation of human anatomy. In the fresco he used mainly sallow pigments: ochre, siena, umbra, green ground (terra verde), and at times cinnabar. He also used the grey colour of plaster (when painting the sky); he obtained lights by laying thick layers of calcium. His oil paintings on canvas were painted directly on bole primer, without grounding (alla prima).

Herliczka's first work mentioned in the archives was the restoration of a wall painting in 1749. The painting was placed in a garden at J.K. Branicki's palace in Warszawa, painted ayear before by G.W. Neunhertz (most certainly together with Herliczka). In 1750 he received a commission from Izabella Czartoryska née Morsztyn to paint illusionistic altars in a church in Siedlce: the main and four side altars, he gilded and painted with oil (for 2940 PLN) the altar menses and the ciborium (wall paintings are likely to be preserved partly under the plaster). In 1751 he made paintings for J.K. Branicki on the vault and walls of the church in Białystok (preserved and unveiled). In 1752 he may have worked in Kraków. From 1753 on he was permanently employed by J.K. Branicki: in 1754 in the palace in Białystok he paint the vault in the dining room on the ground floor and restored the History of Paris on the wall in the exterior gallery on the part of the garden (painted in 1738 by G.W. Neunhertz), and in the palace in Warszawa painted the vestibule under the boudoir. In 1755 he painted the room of the Pavilion at the Channel in the Lower Garden in Białystok, the frontons and portraits of horses to the palace in Stołowacz near Bielsk (the Podlasie region); in 1756 in the palace in Białystok he designed figures on the Gate under Griffon (the old one) and made paintings in the vestibule (preserved only in parts and unveiled), and the stucco fresco in the Big Room on the first floor (according to the design made in Dresden). In the two palace pavilions in Choroszcz near Białystok he made designs and supervised the decoration works, painted vaults and walls, and made a dozen or so easel paintings, including several portraits; in 1757 he made paintings on the vault and walls of the church in Choroszcz (preserved in parts, unveiled and reconstructed on the basis of archival photos); in 1758 he painted the Supraśl Gate in Białystok (“under the Deer”), in Choroszcz he completed works in the church, designed stuccoes in the palace and painted, in Warszawa he painted a carriage; in 1760 – until October he worked somewhere in Lithuania, in Białystok he painted portraits of the two Branickis; in 1761 he decorated in Białystok the interiors of the four presbyteries (preserved and unveiled), in Tyczyn near Rzeszów he made (most likely in the same year) paintings in the church (preserved under plaster, only on the walls); in 1762 he painted in Białystok the walls of the Big Room under restoration; in 1763 in Białystok he made paintings, according to his own design, in the theatre and copied the portraits of the two Branickis destined for the “foreign countries,” in Choroszcz he worked in the annexes of the palace – he painted the dining room and the vestibule (the Kitchen Annexe), in Tyczyn he completed (most likely) painting of the church. After 1764 J.K. Branicki, until his death in 1771, he did not leave Białystok for longer periods, thus there are no mentions in his correspondence about Herliczka's works. We know from other archives that Herliczka at that time made fresco in Białystok on a wall in the Ionic colonnade (partly preserved, unveiled, and reconstructed), the paintings on the vault of the Big Orangery (referring to the conferral of the Order of Golden Fleece on J.K. Branicki), decorated facades and interiors of the houses in the town; In Choroszcz he painted the refectory in the Dominican monastery. The inventory of 1772 lists two Herliczka's paintings in Białystok treasury on the Old Testament and ten landscapes.

After her husband's death, I. Branicka rarely employed Herliczka. In that time he painted mainly for other employers, most often the Branickis' relatives. For I. Branicka he made the following works: in 1773 he painted the “small room” and stairs in the Winter Apartment in the Guest Annexe of the palace in Białystok; in 1777 he made a portrait of J.K. Branicki for Castrum doloris the funeral in Kraków; in 1779 he copied a painting from Choroszcz; in 1780 he decorated a wagonette in Białystok and painted a portrait; in 1781 he decorated rooms in the restored Pavilion on the Channel in the Lower Garden in Białystok; in the years 1791-1792 he painted two paintings in the church in Dolistowo on the Biebrza. In Białystok in a presbytery an oil painting on canvas is preserved from that period; it shows St. Vincent a Paulo. Herliczka was commissioned by I. Branicka, probably in 1774, to make paintings in the court in Jordanowice near Grodzisk Mazowiecki (it belonged to Andrzej Mokronowski, a secret husband of I. Branicka). In the second half of the 1770s he received a commission from Rev. Antoni Wacław Betański to make five monochromatic (oil on canvas) landscape fronton for the presbytery in Tyczyn (preserved). For King Stanisław August Poniatowski he made paintings in the interior of the Myślewicki Palace in Warsaw Łazienki: in 1776 in eight (or nine) small rooms on the second floor (paintings preserved in the small room with “sciencias”), in 1777 in the apartment on the ground floor on the west side (the paintings preserved in the “landscape” room and in parts in the corner office room, reconstructed), and on the staircase (preserved); commissioned by the king in 1788, he painted the billiard room and two rooms in the inn at Ujazdów barracks in Warszawa, and also portraits (it is hard to define exactly when). For Bp Jan Stefan Giedroyć (from 1764 on Bishop of Inflanty, and from 1778 on Bishop of Samogitia) he painted in 1775/1776 (or later) the interior of the St. Andrew's church in Słonim (the paintings partly preserved on the walls, unveiled, on the vault reconstructed on the basis of archival photos), and in the first half of the 1780s he painted the office room on the first floor in the palace in Rybienko near Wyszków on the Bug (the paintings are preserved and repainted). For Prince Karol Stanisław Radziwiłł he painted after 13^th July 1784 the hall and “some rooms” in the castle in Nieśwież (the commission was drawn in Warszawa on 2^nd July 1784, the paintings in the hall may likely be preserved under plaster). For Józefa Aleksandra Ogińska née Czartoryska he made some unknown works in 1780 and 1781 in Siedlce. Herliczka would go somewhere to work in 1779.