From Zenon Przesmycki’s Norwidian archive (4). Descriptions of Norwid’s artistic works from the Polish National Museum in Rapperswil

Abstract

The article publishes two documents (typescripts) from Zenon Przesmycki’s Norwidian archive kept in the National Library, that contain descriptions of Norwid’s artistic works, including oil paintings, watercolors and sketches, coming from the collection of the Polish National Museum in Rapperswil. The first of these documents includes a list of more than 30 artistic works by Norwid borrowed by Przesmycki from the Rapperswil museum before 1920. The other one contains descriptions of 46 drawings and watercolors. When the collections belonging to that extremely important institution that rendered great service to Poland were brought to our country, they were transferred to the State Collection of Art. The documents make it to a large degree possible to reconstruct the contents of the Rapperswil collection of Norwid’s artistic works, which were dispersed during the Second World War, and most of them are now considered to be lost. In public (the National Museum in Warsaw, the A. Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw) and private collections more than a dozen items out of nearly eighty ones described by Przesmycki, that came from the Polish museum in Rapperswil, have survived. The edition of Przesmycki’s texts is preceded by introductory remarks containing a description of the collection of Norwid’s artistic works from Rapperswil and an attempt to follow their vicissitudes after the Polish National Museum collection was brought to Warsaw.