Leon Kapliński

Born 1826 in Petrykozy not far from Warsaw, Leon was the son of Julia (Grabowska) and a small landowner and eminent freemason, Jan Kapliński.

Leon Kapliński studied law and philosophy in Warsaw and Wrocław (Breslau).

He befriended several well-known Polish artists and writers, including Henryk Rodakowski, Jan Matejka, and Cyprian Kamil Norwid.

His best works are portraits: of his mother Julia (1860), the writer Bohdan Zaleski (1857), Count Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (about 1860), and an autoportrait as a Templar (about 1872).

continued the tradition of academic painting and had no interest for the emerging modernist tendencies of the mid-nineteenth century.