Buchbinder, Józef

Buchbinder, Józef, Polish painter and illustrator, 1862: student at the Art Academy in Dresden; 1863, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. *17.12.1839 Mordy, †14.5.1909 Warsaw. Brother of the painter Szymon Buchbinder. (1853-1924). Born into a Jewish family, as a child he helps his father to paint and restore paintings. He completes his secondary school time in the Benedictine Abbey in Łuków. Because he is a talented copier of lithographies and woodcuts the Benedictine monks encourage him to start a course (1856-61) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw/Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie under Rafał Hadziewicz (1803-1883) and Jan Ksawery Kaniewski (1805-1867). 1857: he is baptised a Catholic in Mordy. 1862: he studies at the Art Academy in Dresden under Julius Hübner (1806-1882) and Carl Gottlieb Peschel (1798-1879). On 2.2.1863 he enrols in the painting class at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and studies under Hermann Anschütz (1802-1880). 1863-68: he studies at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, where he is influenced by the Nazarene group of painters. He copies Renaissance paintings, including the “Madonna di Foligno” by Raffael, and paints religious portraits commissioned by priests in Rome. 1870: he moves to live in Warsaw. He paints numerous, mostly large-format, altar pictures for churches throughout Poland, restores church paintings and portraits. 1879-85: he is made head of the arts section of the weekly Tygodnik Ilustrowany, for which he completes hundreds of illustrations, mostly portraits of contemporary personalities. His works can be found in the national museums in Cracow and Warsaw, in the National Gallery in Lviv and in many churches in Poland. 

Further Reading: Antoni Gawiński/Marian Wawrzeniecki: Józef Buchbinder. Polski malarz religijny (1839-1909), Warsaw 1910; Halina Stępień/Maria Liczbińska: Artyści polscy w środowisku monachijskim w latach 1828-1914. Materiały źródłowe, Warsaw 1994, p. 8, 31; Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, vol. 14, Munich/Leipzig 1996, p. 662; Jednodniówka – Eintagszeitung. New edition, edited by Zbigniew Fałtynowicz / Eliza Ptaszyńska, Muzeum Okręgowe w Suwałkach, Suwałki 2008, simultaneously exhibition catalogue “Signatur - anders geschrieben. Anwesenheit Polnische Künstler im Lichte von Archivalien“, Polnisches Kulturzentrum, Munich 2008

Online: Matriculation data base, Matriculation book 2, Academy of Fine Arts Munich, 01930 Josef Buchbinder, http://matrikel.adbk.de/matrikel/mb_1841-1884/jahr_1863/matrikel-01930

eduteka, http://www.eduteka.pl/doc/buchbinder-jozef

Radzyń Podlaski, http://www.radzyn-podl.pl/turystyka/zabytki/kosciol-p-w-sw-trojcy.html

Muzeum Zamoyskich w Kozłówce, http://www.muzeumzamoyskich.pl/buchbinder

Arkadiusz Kulpa: Trzy daty urodzin (2014), auf: igrot.pl, http://www.igrot.pl/historia/500-trzy-daty-urodzin.html

Axel Feuß, March 2017