A watercolor by Antoni Malczewski?

Strona wydawcy: https://www.wuj.pl

In the Museum of Lithuanian Art (Lietuvos Dailės Muziejus), Vilnius, there is a watercolor painting datable to ca. 1806-1831 (1810-1826?), representing a young man in the uniform characteristic of the Vilnius educational district. The signature A. Malczewski allows us to presume that it is a work by Antoni Malczewski (1793-1825), an outstanding Polish Romantic poet, author of the famous poem Maria, published in 1825. The Vilnius educational district encompassed a huge territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, seized by Russia at the end of the 18th century. The uniform for both the educational corps and students were introduced in 1806 and were in use until 1831, when the Polish educational institutes were ultimately abolished by the Russian government. The main part of the uniform was a marine blue coatee with a sapphire collar. The status of each person was indicated by embroidered golden decoration on the collar and cuffs. The students had no right to the embroideries at all. There are several examples of portraits (in Polish and Lithuanian museums) of professors and other notables of the Vilnius educational district. Portraits of students exist as well. From 1805 to 1811, Antoni Malczewski attended the Krzemieniec high school, belonging to the Vilnius district. He completed advanced drawing courses, at Krzemieniec and continued them as a student of the military engineering school in Warsaw. His only confirmed drawing shows his exeptional drawing skills, but is difficult to compare it with the Vilnius water color. In any case, the poet was capable of producing a well-executed portrait of one of his Krzemieniec classmates, although the attribution cannot be treated as fully proven. A further hypothesis can be advanced: it would be extremely interesting if we were dealing with a self-portrait by the poet, whose physiognomy has not been preserved by any known document.