Aunt Franusia (Franciszka Cieszejko)

The painting depicts an elderly woman, dressed in a dark Art Nouveau dress with a stand-up collar decorated with a cameo. The title aunt Franusia, that is Franciszka Cieszejko, is sitting in a high upholstered armchair in Louis Philippe style, holding a small ladies' dog on her lap. While its breed is difficult to verify (a clipped Maltese, Bolognese, miniature poodle or Spitz), the identity of the portrayed is known thanks to a sticker on the back of the canvas, with the author's handwritten note. The painter, Bronisława Łukaszewiczówna was born in Kątek in the Vilnius region. After graduating from the gymnasium in Saint Petersburg (1901), she attended the local Pedagogical Lyceum, which prepared her to become a teacher of drawing, drafting and calligraphy. At the same time, she studied at the School of Technical Drawing of Baron Alexander von Stieglitz. She continued her education at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, graduating in 1932. During the First World War she already exhibited together with Vilnius artists (Jan Bułhak, Stanisław Bohusz-Siestrzeńcewicz). Thanks to the care of the Salon of Felix Richling from Warsaw, her paintings were offered next to the works of already valued at that time Olga Boznańska and Zofia Stankiewiczówna, as well as Bronisława Rychter-Janowska, who became popular a little later. The artist found herself in the circle of Ferdynand Ruszczyc's influence who invited her to become a member of the Vilnius Guild, but the group was eventually not formed. In the interwar period, Łukaszewicz took part in Polish-Lithuanian initiatives, such as an art exhibition in the Kaunas premises of the Omega publishing company (1925). When the Vilnius Society of Independent Artists was founded in 1931, she joined its ranks and remained a member until the outbreak of World War II. From the very beginning the painter's speciality was watercolour, which she used in her landscape compositions and floral still lives. After 1945 she lived in Poznań for a short time before moving to Szczecin two years later. At the same time, she took up sculpture and made models of animals for the researchers at the Polish Zootechnical Society's Professional Training Centre in Pawłowice near Leszno. The painting from the Szczecin collection is probably the oldest surviving testimony to her animalistic interests.

Szymon Piotr Kubiak