View of the castle in Łańcut

Painting (monochrome watercolour) from the collection of the Potocki family, former owners of the castle and Łańcut, shows a view of the Łańcut Castle from the south-western side, from the perspective of a lime avenue running around the moat. It shows the castle, or rather the moat, the defensive walls with loopholes, the earthen ramparts, the gate building and the western façade of the castle with the north-western and south-western towers. The towers are covered with Baroque helmets and painted with precision - the pilasters, cornices and balconies are well visible, same as the clock on the south-western tower. However, the façade itself is shown without architectural divisions, with windows and a roof covering it. Adjacent to the north-western tower is the library pavilion, shown in fragments (floor windows and roof). Closer to the bastion, the roof of the arsenal is visible. The whole composition is kept in browns and made vivid by ladies walking along the lime avenue and a group of four men standing in the moat. These people are sketched with a fine line. On the reverse of the picture, there is a sketch of four cavaliers in costumes characteristic of French fashion and the inscription “Thomas de Thomond” in pencil. The watercolour is framed by a rather wide mount, the painting is put in a flat wooden frame decorated by applied gilt rosettes at the corners. It shows the castle from the 1790s. Jean François Thomas de Thomon (born April 1760, d. in September 1813 in St. Petersburg) was a Swiss architect, who worked in Poland, Russia and Austria. He studied at the Paris Academy of Fine Arts and later in Rome, when he finally settled. In 1792, he went to Russia at the invitation of the Russian ambassador in Vienna. After a short stay in Moscow, he went to St Petersburg in 1799, where he became a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. Abroad he met with Princess Lubomirska, who invited him to Łańcut (where, among other things, he was to make a design for the Sculpture Gallery in the castle). He stayed in Łańcut probably during his journey to Russia.