Background
Franciszek Smuglewicz was born in Warsaw into a Polish-Lithuanian family. His father, Łukasz Smuglewicz, also a painter, had moved to Warsaw from the Lithuanian province of Samogitia.
Franciszek Smuglewicz was born in Warsaw into a Polish-Lithuanian family. His father, Łukasz Smuglewicz, also a painter, had moved to Warsaw from the Lithuanian province of Samogitia.
Smuglewicz is considered a progenitor of Lithuanian art in the modern era. Some consider him as a spiritual father of January Matejko"s school of painting. In 1763 Franciszek journeyed to Rome, where he began the study of fine arts under the tutorship of Anton von Maron.
He stayed in Rome for 21 years, where he embraced the Neo-Classical style.
In 1765 he received a royal scholarship from the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Stanisław August Poniatowski and was admitted into the Saint Lucas Academy. In 1784 he returned to Warsaw, where he founded his own school of fine arts, one of the predecessors of the modern Academy of Fine Arts.
A classicist, but under strong influence of the Polish baroque, Smuglewicz became a notable representative of historical paintings, a genre that dominated the fine arts of Poland throughout the 19th century. Around 1790 he started working on a series of sketches and lithographies inspired by Adam Naruszewicz"s History of the Polish Nation.
Although never finished, this series gained him much popularity.
A tutor of generations of Polish-Lithuanian painters, Smuglewicz devoted himself to historical paintings in the latter years of his life. He painted everyday life, and the architecture of Vilnius in a realistic manner. Among the notable surviving works of that period are A Meeting of the Four Years" Sejm (1793) and Kościuszko"s Oath at Krakow"s Old Town Market (1797), Lithuanian Peasants, Freeing Peasants from Serfdom in Merkinė.
Among his works of the period are views of the city walls and city gates that were demolished during the 19th century.
He was buried in Vilnius at Rasos Cemetery (Polish: Cmentarz na Rossie), although the exact location is not known.
He brought to Lithuania classical ideas and views of enlightened classicism.