Helena Skirmunt

Helena Skirmunt (sometimes Skirmuntt or Skirmuntowa; Belarusian: Гелена Скірмунт; 5 November 1827 – 1 February 1874) was a Polish painter and sculptor.

In her later years she turned to historical sculpture drawing inspiration from the history of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Skirmuntt was born in 1827 in Kalodnaje [be] between Pinsk and Stolin in present-day Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire.

She received education at home from private tutors, but also studied for a few months under the landscape painter Wincenty Dmochowski in Vilnius.

In 1844, she accompanied an acquaintance to Berlin, later visiting Dresden and Paris to study western art.

[3] She created some religious works for churches, but a woman painter and sculptor was received with skepticism.

[3] After her trip to Austria and Italy, she took up sculpting creating bas-relief medallions with portraits of relatives, friends and public figures, including Bronisław Zaleski (1859), Joachim Lelewel (1860), Józef Ignacy Kraszewski.

[1] Exhibitions of her works were organized by the Kraków Society of Friends of Fine Arts (1874), in Lviv (1874/75), and in Warsaw (1876–1877 and 1883).