Leon Wyczółkowski

Leon Wyczółkowski - painter and graphic artist, born in Huta Miastkowska, a small town in the Garwolin district, on April 11, 1852, counting according to the Julian calendar in force in the then Russian partition. However, in the Krakow archives of the parish of St. Florian, a marriage certificate with Franciszka Panek in 1916 has been preserved, with an entry on April 24 on the artist's birthday. The document was drawn up on the basis of the Gregorian calendar, which has been used for a long time in most European countries.

Leon Wyczółkowski attended a school in Kamionka near Lublin and a junior high school in Siedlce. In the years 1869-1875 he studied at the Warsaw School of Drawing and Painting under the supervision of Wojciech Gerson, in the years 1875-1876 he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Aleksander Wagner. Then he studied at the Krakow School of Fine Arts in the studio of Jan Matejko (1877-1879). In the years 1879-1880 he settled in Lviv. In 1881 he returned to Warsaw, where, inter alia, he taught at a private painting school. In the years 1883-1893 he stayed in Ukraine and Podolia. In 1895 he was appointed professor of painting at the School of Fine Arts in Krakow. In 1921, Leon Wyczółkowski donated to the Wielkopolska Museum in Poznań a substantial collection of works of art and craftsmanship, numbering 179 inventory items. For the donated collection, Leon Wyczółkowski received a financial compensation from the Ministry of the former Prussian District, for which he purchased a manor house in Bogaradz near Bydgoszcz.

At the end of his life, in 1934-1936, he headed the graphics department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He died on December 27, 1936 of pneumonia. According to his last will, he was buried near his beloved Guestradz - in the parish cemetery in Wtelno.

On April 8, 1937, the widow - Franciszka Wyczółkowska, gave the City of Bydgoszcz, according to the artist's will, a collection of his works - oils, watercolors, pastels, drawings, graphics (942 items in total) as well as personal mementos, furniture and studio equipment, which initiated a monographic collection devoted to the person and the artist's work.

In December 1937, a year after the artist's death, the Committee for the Construction of a Monument to Leon Wyczółkowski was established. The chairman of the committee was Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły and delegates - professors of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Kraków and the Faculty of Art of the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius. It was decided to build a tombstone from single-zloty contributions from artists from all over Poland. A competition for the design of the monument was announced, the deadline for sending the works was scheduled for June 1, 1938. The design of the sculptor prof. Tadeusz Breyer. The lack of income from contributions and subsidies did not allow the order to be placed in the stone factory. The construction of the tombstone was taken over by the Mayor of Bydgoszcz, Leon Barciszewski, handed over the documentation and commissioned the construction of the monument to the Piotr Triebler Stone Works, known in Bydgoszcz. The tombstone was completed in September 1939.

In May 1943, Franciszka Wyczółkowska, the artist's wife, was buried in the tomb.