Puławy, tree in Kępa Puławska with Theotokos

Album Lubelskie [Lublin Album] is a work created in the years 1857-1859 based on watercolours made in 1852 by Adam Lerue, an artist, with his drawings and watercolours, who contributed to the inventory of the monuments of Lublin and the region - as he wrote in the introduction to this work - close to his heart because of its place birth, i.e. Dubienka. Julian Cegliński and Władysław Walkiewicz, who made lithographs in the Warsaw lithographic workshop of Adolf Pecq, also worked on its creation. The second part, featuring views from Puławy, dates to 1858–1860.

The graphic shows a view from Izabela Czartoryska's park in Puławy at the now non-existent Marian chapel in an old poplar. Thanks to the duchess, the park gained a larger area. Czartoryska had a passion for picturesque corners typical of English park layouts, and a gardener, James Savage, helped her to implement her plans, transforming the French into the English one.

The chapel was located near the Vistula River, visible in the distance behind a tree, in the area belonging to the Institute of Alexandrinsky-Mariinsky Education of Maidens at that time, transferred to Puławy on the initiative of the Russian authorities, where it was located until 1862.

The extensive park layout houses numerous classicist monuments, created on the initiative of Izabela Czartoryska. After 1782, the Duchess decided to enlarge the park next to the palace and transform it into an English-type lookout. Its area includes over 600 hectares of land, including Kępa Puławska, an islet located on the Vistula River, surrounded by a river and sandbanks. Part of Kępa was occupied by a forest, today modestly preserved, while the remaining areas are fields, meadows and pastures. Agricultural land there occupied about 300 hectares. Integrating the buildings into nature and creating alleys and viewpoints required care which was entrusted to the peasants of Włostowice.

The charming corner was celebrated by the poets: Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Jan Paweł Woronicz and Franciszek Dionizy Kniaźnin. The testimony of his fascination is a fragment of an ode by F. D. Kniaźnin to Do Topoli [To Poplar]:

Hello, neighbour of the Vistula high!

Static next to an unstable river,

Your job is broad basically.

You have lived through our three fathers for ages.

Klara Sadkowska