Offset lithograph on paper, signed with the monogram "JR." The print is from the portfolio *From Old and Recent Warsaw: An Album of Street Scenes*, Warsaw, 1926.
Dimensions in frame: 67x54 cm (43x33 cm)
Józef Rapacki (Warsaw 1871 – 1929, Olszanka near Żyrardów), known as “the painter of birches and lilac heather,” was one of the most popular Warsaw landscape painters of the late 19th and first quarter of the 20th centuries. He began his artistic education as a student of Wojciech Gerson at the Warsaw Drawing Class. Later, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków under Florian Cynk (1886–1887) and in Munich at Friedrich Fehr’s private school (1888–1889). After completing his studies, he traveled to Italy several times. He participated in numerous exhibitions at the Society of Friends of Fine Arts (TZSP) in Warsaw, as well as in Lviv (where he won a silver medal in 1894), Kraków, Vilnius, and Kielce. He also exhibited abroad—in Berlin (1893) and in Paris, where he was awarded a diploma at the Universal World’s Fair in 1900. He was a member of the “Pro Arte” group. From 1907 onward, he lived permanently in Olszanka, a village on the edge of the Mariańska Forest, near Skierniewice. He painted primarily realistic, atmospheric landscapes and genre scenes set in landscapes, as well as portraits and interiors. He practiced printmaking, worked as a book illustrator, and collaborated with Warsaw-based magazines, including *Tygodnik Ilustrowany*, *Wędrowiec*, *Świat*, and *Biesiada Literacka*.
