Józef Mehoffer - the artist and his wife

From another painter that was previously unknown to me. I love his work. And seeing that there are so many particular and interesting portraits of his wife - I expect there are even more - it got me to pondering how many times it is that I've included my own wonderful wife in my own work. Not a lot, really, inexplicably. If I only count full-on images of her, in ten and a half years of marriage, maybe three times...? That is going to change. Yes!

1898.

"Portrait with a Yellow Background", his wife Jadwiga, née Janakowska, 1907.

1894.

1913.

1898.

Circa 1915-20.

Unknown date.

1904.

1898.

1909.

1937.

1908.

Circa 1892.

Circa 1910.

1897.

1913.

1944.

"At the Summer House", 1904.

1892.

The "Florentine Portrait", 1900.

***

Józef Mehoffer (19 March 1869, Ropczyce – 8 July 1946, Wadowice), Polish painter and decorative artist, one of the leading artists of the Young Poland movement and one of the most respected Polish artists of his time. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, as well as in Paris at the Académie Colarossi and the École des Beaux-Arts; in Paris Mehoffer began painting portraits. He later expanded his work to include different techniques and artistic disciplines, such as stained glass, textiles, etchings, book illustrations, and other graphic arts. He produced set designs for the theater, and stylized furniture designs. Mehoffer received international acclaim for his stained glass windows in the Gothic St Nicholas Collegiate Church in Fribourg, Switzerland, realized between 1895 and 1936. He produced other important stained glass designs, mostly for churches and cathedrals in Poland. Besides his versatility in studio art, he is also known for his frescoes, which are often reminiscent of medieval art. He married Jadwiga Janakowska in 1899, with whom he had a son, Zbigniew, the following year. He died at the age of seventy-seven; his wife died ten years later, at the age of eighty-five.

Circa 1910.