Jerzy Rupniewski, Portrait of a man with an apple, 1938.

Jerzy Rupniewski (b. 1888, d. 1950)
Portrait of a man with an apple, 1938.
gouache on cardboard, 100 x 70 cm
signed l. d. corner
framed

A student of the Merchants' Congregation Commercial School in Warsaw and the Commercial College in Lausanne, from which he graduated in 1908. From 1912 he briefly studied painting at the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw, then (until 1913) sculpture in Munich. From 1914 he exhibited pencil drawings and oil and watercolor paintings at the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and in 1917 organized his first solo exhibition (he showed about a hundred works there). From 1920 he lived in Zalesie near Bydgoszcz, and from November 1920 in Bydgoszcz itself. He painted city views, old houses and streets, Bydgoszcz Venice, monuments and their details several times. He also painted portraits of fishermen, workers, craftsmen and vendors. He belonged to the Julian Falat Artists' Fraternity in Torun. In search of subjects, he traveled to Venice, Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, Paris, Lausanne, Nuremberg and Essen, among other places. He exhibited at the Bydgoszcz City Museum and the Bydgoszcz Salon. From November 1929 to 1931 he was vice-president and then president of the Association of Pomeranian Artists. During the war he stayed in Lviv, Janowice in Sandomierskie, Warsaw, Pruszkow and Zakopane. After the war, he returned to Bydgoszcz and joined the Association of Polish Artists. At an exhibition of works by members of the Pomeranian District of this Union in May 1946, he received an award from the Bydgoszcz Regional National Council and a medal for the 600th anniversary of the city of Bydgoszcz. Since the spring of 1947 he was in a hospital for the mentally and neurologically ill in Swiecie, where he died. He was known as the "Bydgoszcz Canaletto." 43 of his works are in the District Museum in Bydgoszcz.