[1] Chlebowski was born to Polish parents in the village of Pokutyntsi (Pokutyńce), which was then in the Ushitsky Uyezd and Podolian Governorate of the Russian Empire and is now Khmelnytskyi Raion, Ukraine.

Between 1853 and 1859, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and then on a scholarship for six years in Paris as the pupil of the French Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme.

During his services, he had obtained permission to bring with him a large icon of Mother of God Leading Our Way having been rescued from the Hodegon Monastery in 1453.

He died in Kowanówko (then officially named Rundhausen in what was then the German Empire, now Poland) at age 49, and was buried at the Rakowicki Cemetery in Kraków.

[2] The National Museum in Kraków houses some of his other important Orientalist works such as Entrée de Mahomet II à Stamboul.