Kościuszko at Racławice. Twenty-eight frames from nine meters of canvas
Nine meters wide, twenty-eight frames, one thesis: that the battle was won by peasants. Matejko painted it in 1888, on the 94th anniversary — and left no key to the figures. This page proposes its own, with an honest distinction between what can be seen and what the literature attributes.
Jan Matejko, Kościuszko at Racławice oil on canvas, 465 × 897 cm sketch 1885 · painted 1887–1888 · Sukiennice since 1888 National Museum in Kraków, inv. no. MNK II-a-151
The canvas with markers
0 of 28
The canvas in the Sukiennice is almost nine meters wide; here too it is wider than the screen — drag it sideways. Clicking a number or a thumbnail moves it for you. The “Enlarge the canvas” button doubles the scale — then it scrolls in both directions; leave with the Esc key.
Marker with a solid outline: a figure or detail recognizable directly on the canvas. Dashed: a name attributed on the basis of old explanations of the painting — Matejko left no key.
A wide, low composition: on the left a dark pine forest, on the right an open, sunlit landscape with hills and a distant fight. On the left, in the shadow of the trees, a group of riders and officers — a man in a black cloak on a gun carriage, beside him a nobleman in a crimson żupan sitting on the ground, farther back a rider in black on a black horse and a trumpeter. Lower down, a Russian grenadier in a brass miter kneels and hands his musket to a Polish officer; at the bottom edge lie the fallen in red uniforms. In the middle of the canvas, on horseback, Tadeusz Kościuszko in a light uniform and red waistcoat raises his four-cornered cap toward the crowd. Around him, peasants in white sukmana coats with scythes mounted upright, arms raised; above them a crimson banner with the White Eagle, and higher, on a pine, a small shrine. In the foreground a friar in a brown habit kneels over a dying officer in a sky-blue uniform. In the right half the crowd gathers around two captured cannons with golden barrels: a man raises a red four-cornered cap, beside him a scythe-bearer in a white sukmana looks upward. By the cannon stands Wojciech Bartos Głowacki in a white sukmana and a wide leather belt, his hand on the barrel, on which lies a red cap. Next to him, in a red cloak, a man holds a tall church banner with an image of Christ in the crown of thorns. Lower down, a peasant gives water to a wounded prisoner. At the right edge a scythe-bearer in a red four-cornered cap lights his pipe.
The painting described in words
A wide, low composition: on the left a dark pine forest, on the right an open, sunlit landscape with hills and a distant fight. On the left, in the shadow of the trees, a group of riders and officers — a man in a black cloak on a gun carriage, beside him a nobleman in a crimson żupan sitting on the ground, farther back a rider in black on a black horse and a trumpeter. Lower down, a Russian grenadier in a brass miter kneels and hands his musket to a Polish officer; at the bottom edge lie the fallen in red uniforms. In the middle of the canvas, on horseback, Tadeusz Kościuszko in a light uniform and red waistcoat raises his four-cornered cap toward the crowd. Around him, peasants in white sukmana coats with scythes mounted upright, arms raised; above them a crimson banner with the White Eagle, and higher, on a pine, a small shrine. In the foreground a friar in a brown habit kneels over a dying officer in a sky-blue uniform. In the right half the crowd gathers around two captured cannons with golden barrels: a man raises a red four-cornered cap, beside him a scythe-bearer in a white sukmana looks upward. By the cannon stands Wojciech Bartos Głowacki in a white sukmana and a wide leather belt, his hand on the barrel, on which lies a red cap. Next to him, in a red cloak, a man holds a tall church banner with an image of Christ in the crown of thorns. Lower down, a peasant gives water to a wounded prisoner. At the right edge a scythe-bearer in a red four-cornered cap lights his pipe.
Twenty-eight frames
The numbering is our own — Matejko, unlike Trumbull, left no key sheet to this painting. The frames come from the 4,000-pixel reproduction in the collection of the National Museum in Kraków.
Description of the selected frame
1
Frame number 1. Soldier behind the pine
regular infantryman · left edge of the canvas · April 4, 1794
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookAt the very left edge, in the shadow of a trunk — a shako with a metal plate, a musket barrel, and half a face. The first frame of the painting.
Worth knowingThe regular Crown infantry formed the core of Kościuszko’s forces at Racławice; the peasants with scythes were a volunteer unit, not an army. Matejko begins the canvas with an anonymous soldier in shadow and ends it, on the right, with an anonymous peasant in sunlight — not by accident, but as the axis of the whole composition.
What the painter did with itA figure almost beyond recognition: the painter deliberately hid him in the gloom of the forest so that the viewer’s eye would begin its journey in darkness and travel toward the light on the right.
2
Frame number 2. Wounded nobleman in crimson
nobleman, likely wounded in the battle ·
Attributed per the literature
Where to lookIn the left foreground, propped against a gun carriage and an animal hide — a crimson żupan, a gilded sash, a fur cap with a white feather, a hand at his chest.
Worth knowingCrimson was the color of the magnates; this figure brings onto the canvas that part of the nobility which did take part in the Kościuszko Uprising — but in the posture of a broken man, not a triumphant one. The literature has not established his name.
What the painter did with itMatejko built the entire group on the left in a dark, “defeated” key and the one on the right in a bright, victorious one. This man is its strongest accent: rich dress, a helpless pose.
3
Frame number 3. Commander in a black coat
general on the Commander’s staff ·
Attributed per the literature
Where to lookBehind the wounded nobleman, on the gun carriage — a black cloak thrown over his uniform, a plumed hat, one arm stretched out to the side in a gesture of command.
Worth knowingKościuszko’s staff at Racławice included Gen. Antoni Madaliński, Gen. Józef Zajączek, and Gen. Józef Wodzicki, among others. Descriptions of the painting list them among the figures but disagree on which face belongs to whom — which is why the marker is dashed.
What the painter did with itThe black expanse of the cloak is one of the largest patches of color in the painting; it draws the eye into the upper left corner and balances the red banner on the right.
Russian soldiers · the battlefield · April 4, 1794
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookLower left corner, at the viewer’s feet: bodies in red uniforms and green trousers, abandoned muskets with bayonets, knapsacks.
Worth knowingRussian losses at Racławice are estimated at several hundred killed and wounded; Polish losses were lower, but the scythemen paid the highest price in the charge on the battery. Matejko did not paint a single dead peasant — a choice, not a report.
What the painter did with itThe bodies lie in the lowest band of the painting, right at the bottom edge. A viewer standing before the canvas in the Sukiennice (Cloth Hall) has them literally at their own feet.
5
Frame number 5. Trumpeter
cavalry trumpeter ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookIn the staff group on the left, among the officers in shakos — a light uniform, a brass trumpet lowered against his chest.
Worth knowingIn the eighteenth century the signal trumpet was the only way to pass an order through the noise of battle. Lowered, it means the fighting has already stopped: the painting shows not the clash but the moment after it.
What the painter did with itMatejko liked such “silent” props — an instrument that is quiet says more about the end of a battle than the bodies on the ground.
6
Frame number 6. Grenadier surrendering his weapon
Russian prisoner ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookMiddle of the left half, on the slope — kneeling in a tall brass grenadier’s miter, handing his musket with both hands to the officer standing before him.
Worth knowingAt Racławice the Russians lost twelve cannons and part of their baggage train; prisoners were taken mainly at the captured battery. The grenadier’s miter is the mark of elite infantry — Matejko shows that the victory was won not over the weaker but over the best.
What the painter did with itThe gesture of surrendering the weapon is painted without humiliation: both figures have calm faces. It is one of the arguments that the painting is about reconciliation between the estates, not about triumph over an enemy.
7
Frame number 7. Hugo Kołłątaj
co-author of the May 3 Constitution, co-organizer of the uprising · 1750–1812
Attributed per the literature
Where to lookOn horseback, in the background on the left — all in black, in a three-cornered hat, on a black horse; the only rider dressed like a clergyman.
Worth knowingA priest, the reforming rector of the Kraków Academy, co-author of the Constitution of May 3, and one of the authors of the Act of Insurrection of March 24, 1794. He was not at Racławice — Matejko brought him onto the canvas as the face of the uprising’s political program. He stood behind its radical wing and behind the idea of bringing peasants into the army.
What the painter did with itBlack on a black horse, away from the crowd: Matejko keeps the politician at a distance from the people who have just won the battle. The marker is dashed because the identification rests on descriptions of the painting, not on the painter’s own caption.
Where to lookFacing the kneeling grenadier, with his back to the viewer — a dark navy uniform, a white belt across his back, a cap with a plume, a saber at his leg.
Worth knowingMatejko showed him from behind and without a face. In nineteenth-century history painting that is a rarity: the victor usually looked at the viewer. Here all the attention stays with the prisoner.
What the painter did with itThe dark silhouette closes the left group and forms a vertical frame for the scene of surrender.
9
Frame number 9. Nobleman with drawn saber
noble volunteer (identified in some accounts as Gabriel Taszycki) ·
Attributed per the literature
Where to lookBehind the staff group, standing in a rust-colored short kontusz with a white neckcloth; in his right hand a bare saber, blade pointing down.
Worth knowingOld explanations of the painting name Gabriel Taszycki “with drawn saber” at this spot. The Taszyckis were a Kraków family active in the uprising; the attribution comes from the literature, not from the painter — hence the dashed marker.
What the painter did with itThe saber is lowered, not raised. Every blade on the left side of the painting is sheathed or pointed downward — the fighting is over.
10
Frame number 10. Friar beside the dying
priest or monk ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookIn the center foreground, kneeling with his back to the viewer in a brown habit belted with a cord, hands at his face, bent over the wounded.
Worth knowingThe hooded habit with a cord points to an order of the Franciscan rule — the Bernardines or the Capuchins, present both in Kraków and around Racławice. He kneels over a wounded Russian officer: the ministry is for the enemy.
What the painter did with itThe only figure in the painting turned with its back to the victory. Matejko placed it exactly in the middle of the bottom edge — beneath the hooves of the Naczelnik’s horse.
11
Frame number 11. Tadeusz Kościuszko
Supreme Commander of the National Armed Forces · 1746–1817
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookOn horseback in the middle of the left half of the canvas, above the crowd: a light uniform with silver braiding, a red waistcoat, white breeches; in his raised right hand a four-cornered cap (rogatywka), with which he salutes the peasants.
Worth knowingHe was 48 at the time, with seven years of the American war behind him — Saratoga and West Point. At Racławice he personally led the scythemen’s charge on the battery. The Proclamation of Połaniec, issued a month later, was an attempt to turn that single day into law.
What the painter did with itMatejko did not dress him in a peasant sukmana, though that is the best-known image of the Naczelnik (commander-in-chief) — Kościuszko put on the sukmana only after the battle. The uniform follows the one in Michał Stachowicz’s painting, made while witnesses were still alive. The face was lent to the painter by Father Antoni Gruszecki.
Where to lookIn the foreground, on the ground beside the friar — a sky-blue uniform with gold embroidery, head fallen back, bent figures beside him covering their faces.
Worth knowingThe Russians at Racławice were commanded by Gen. Alexander Tormasov. Matejko did not paint him — in place of the commander he gave a nameless officer in his agony, surrounded by the care of the victorious side.
What the painter did with itThe blue of this uniform is the coldest color in the painting, placed in the warmest, brownish band of the foreground. The contrast brings the eye back here every time.
13
Frame number 13. Scythe-bearer beside the Commander’s horse
peasant volunteer ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookJust behind the head of Kościuszko’s horse, in a white shirt — both arms raised high, face tilted back.
Worth knowingThe scythemen at Racławice were about two thousand peasants from villages around Kraków, armed with scythes mounted upright and with pikes. Their attack on the Russian battery decided the battle — for the first time in the history of the Commonwealth, a peasant formation decided the outcome of a fight.
What the painter did with itThe arms are raised toward the Naczelnik, not toward the sky. This gesture recurs a dozen times in the crowd and forms a wave that carries the eye from Kościuszko to the right, toward the captured cannons.
Where to lookOn horseback, behind the crowd of scythemen, beneath the banner with the White Eagle — a tall fur cap, epaulets, a mustache, a staff in his hand.
Worth knowingThe National Cavalry and Madaliński’s brigade were the units with which the uprising began on March 12, 1794: it was the refusal to reduce the brigade that led it into the field. Descriptions of the painting place staff officers in this section — Manget, Horoch, Biernacki — with no agreement on the specific faces.
What the painter did with itThe only mounted figure to the right of the Naczelnik. Matejko keeps the regular army in the middle ground so that the foreground belongs to the peasants.
15
Frame number 15. Shrine on the pine tree
detail · roadside box shrine ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookHigh on the trunk of a pine, in the middle of the upper part of the canvas — a wooden box with a holy picture, barely visible among the branches.
Worth knowingA shrine on a tree is a sign that the battlefield stretches along a road — and that the land at Racławice was an ordinary Polish village, not a parade ground. Matejko was in Racławice in August 1886 and painted the landscape from life.
What the painter did with itPlaced exactly above Kościuszko’s head, on the vertical axis of the composition. Above the Naczelnik — a shrine; above the peasants — the banner with the Ecce Homo: the painting is held together by a religious bracket.
16
Frame number 16. Boy with a drum
youngest participant in the scene ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookOn the slope in the middle of the canvas, bent low — a white shirt, a dark mop of hair, reaching for an abandoned military drum.
Worth knowingA child in a military camp was nothing unusual in the eighteenth century — a whole camp population traveled with the baggage trains. Matejko placed the boy where the composition passes from the riders to the scythemen.
What the painter did with itThe only figure in the painting bending down for loot rather than for a weapon or a wounded man. The detail softens the pathos of the scene.
17
Frame number 17. Banner with the White Eagle
detail · military standard ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookAbove the crowd in the middle of the canvas, on a staff — a crimson cloth with an embroidered silver eagle, without a crown, in the field.
Worth knowingThe uprising marched under the sign of the Eagle and the Pursuit. Crimson was the traditional color of the banners of the Commonwealth; white and red were not sanctioned as the national colors until the Sejm of the Kingdom of Poland did so in 1831.
What the painter did with itThe military banner on the left and the church banner on the right hold the composition like two pillars. The whole crowd is stretched between them.
18
Frame number 18. Scythe-bearers raising their arms
peasant volunteers from villages near Kraków ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookA tight group in the middle of the canvas, between the Naczelnik’s horse and the cannons — white sukmanas, red facings, scythes mounted upright, arms in the air.
Worth knowingA scythe mounted “upright” — that is, in line with the shaft, not at an angle as for mowing — was a pole weapon with the reach of a pike, made by village blacksmiths. Racławice turned it into a national symbol for the next hundred years.
What the painter did with itMatejko brought peasants from the Kraków region to his studio as models; after the painting was finished they appeared in Kraków in a tableau vivant based on this canvas. The evening drew more than four thousand spectators.
Frame number 19. Man raising his four-cornered cap
volunteer from Kraków ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookIn the foreground of the right half, in a dark jacket with red facings and cords — his right arm high in the air, holding a red four-cornered cap.
Worth knowingAfter Racławice the red four-cornered Kraków cap became part of the scythe-bearer’s outfit and a sign of the uprising. The same gesture — a cap raised above the head — is repeated on the left by Kościuszko and completed on the right by Głowacki’s cap on the captured cannon.
What the painter did with itThree red caps: in the Naczelnik’s hand, in this raised arm, and on the barrel of the cannon. Matejko spaced them evenly across the whole width of the canvas, like beats in music.
20
Frame number 20. Scythe-bearer in a white peasant coat (sukmana)
peasant volunteer ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookNext to the raised four-cornered cap, in a white sukmana with a red collar and striped trousers — looking upward, the shaft of a scythe in his hand.
Worth knowingThe sukmana, a coat of white homespun cloth belted with a leather strap, was the everyday dress of the people of the Kraków region. After Racławice it came to mean something else: the garment the Naczelnik himself put on as a sign that the war belonged to the people.
What the painter did with itThe white of the sukmanas brightens the entire right half of the canvas. It is the most luminous color in the painting, and it decides where the eye comes to rest.
21
Frame number 21. Peasant in a sheepskin coat with a canteen
scythe-bearer ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookBy the captured cannon, in a sheepskin coat worn wool-side out — a pewter canteen at his belt, face lifted toward the banner.
Worth knowingPeasants still wore sheepskin coats in April; the battle was fought on a chilly afternoon, April 4, 1794, after three hours of fighting. Matejko cared about such details — he went to Racławice in 1886 to see the terrain and the equipment.
What the painter did with itThe texture of the sheepskin, gray and shaggy, is one of the painting’s showpiece passages; Matejko laid it on in thick impasto, unlike the smooth uniforms on the left.
22
Frame number 22. Captured cannon
Russian field cannon ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookRight half of the canvas, a brass barrel on a red carriage with a yellow wheel — a second such barrel farther right, beside Głowacki.
Worth knowingTwelve cannons were captured at Racławice — Tormasov’s entire artillery. They are the true hero of the right half of the painting: the crowd gathers around them, the banner rests on them, a cap lies on one of them.
What the painter did with itMatejko painted the barrels in the brightest gold he used on this canvas. The spoils shine brighter than the Naczelnik’s uniform.
peasant from Rzędowice, made an ensign of the Kraków Grenadiers after the battle · c. 1758–1794
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookRight part of the canvas, by the captured cannon: a white sukmana, a wide studded leather belt, a mustache — standing upright, his hand resting on the barrel, on which lies a red cap.
Worth knowingWojciech Bartos, a serf from the village of Rzędowice, reached the cannons in the charge on the battery and — as tradition has it — plugged the touchhole with his cap, making it impossible to fire. Kościuszko made him an ensign and gave him the surname Głowacki; the promotions were announced on April 8, 1794, at Wawel Castle. He died at Szczekociny in June of that same year.
What the painter did with itMatejko did not paint the deed itself, only the moment after it: the cap already lies on the barrel, the hand is at rest. The hero stands motionless, facing the viewer — the only figure in the painting who looks at no one and waits for no one.
Where to lookThe highest point of the right half of the painting: a crimson banner topped with a cross, bearing an image of Christ in the crown of thorns and the monogram IHS in a radiant glory.
Worth knowingThe peasants went to Racławice with banners carried out of their village churches — the only “standard” cloth a village had. The Ecce Homo, Christ handed over to the crowd, hangs above a crowd that has just won a battle.
What the painter did with itSet against the brightening sky, it is the only element of the painting that rises above the tree line. Matejko gave the common people a sacred sign where, in battle painting, a regimental standard would usually be.
25
Frame number 25. Scythe-bearer with a banner, in red
volunteer, bearer of the church banner ·
Attributed per the literature
Where to lookBeside Głowacki, in a long red cloak with a gold cord and a medallion — holding the staff of the Ecce Homo banner with both hands.
Worth knowingOld explanations of the painting saw in this part of the canvas Stefan Dembowski “in fine noble dress” — the man who, according to the plans of the uprising, was to replace Kościuszko if he were killed. The identification is disputed and does not come from the painter; that is why the marker is dashed.
What the painter did with itThe red of this cloak and the crimson of the banner together form the largest warm patch in the painting — a counterweight to the commander’s black cloak on the left.
26
Frame number 26. Peasant giving water to the wounded
scythe-bearer beside a prisoner ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookIn the foreground on the right: a man in a gray coat and a sheepskin cap kneels over a wounded Russian in a sky-blue uniform and gives him a drink.
Worth knowingThis scene is the closest to the viewer of all those in the right half of the canvas. The victor does not finish off the enemy — he gives him water. For Matejko, painting in 1888 under the three partitioning powers, this was a statement about what a Polish victory ought to be.
What the painter did with itMatejko repeated the same motif twice in one painting: on the left a friar over a dying officer, on the right a peasant over a wounded prisoner. The clergyman and the peasant do the same thing.
27
Frame number 27. Townsman in a tall hat
volunteer from town ·
Attributed per the literature
Where to lookBehind the cannon on the right, elbow propped on the barrel — a dark frock coat, a tall hat, a hand at his cheek, a thoughtful face.
Worth knowingTownspeople also joined the Kraków uprising — they, alongside the peasants, were the new element in this war. The tall hat and frock coat are city dress, not village and not noble.
What the painter did with itThe only figure in the crowd who looks neither at the Naczelnik, nor at the banner, nor at the spoils. He rests his head on his hand and thinks — Matejko wrote a single moment of doubt into the scene of triumph.
28
Frame number 28. Scythe-bearer with a pipe
peasant volunteer · right edge of the canvas ·
Visible on the canvas
Where to lookLower right corner, by the last captured barrel: a red four-cornered cap, a brown coat with a red lining, a pipe between his teeth, a flint striker in his hand.
Worth knowingThe last figure in the painting, counting from the left. It begins with a soldier hidden in the shadow of the forest and ends with a peasant who, after the battle is won, calmly lights his pipe — in full light, beside a captured cannon.
What the painter did with itMatejko closes the composition with a gesture ordinary to the point of defiance. It is his comment on the battle: a great thing was done by the hands of people who then reached for a pipe.
What this painting does not show
Six months later
Racławice was the first battle of the Kościuszko Uprising and the only victory in the field that Kościuszko won as Naczelnik (commander-in-chief). Strategically it changed nothing: the Russians withdrew in good order, Kraków fell in June, and the road to Warsaw lay open. Matejko painted the day of triumph knowing how the year ended.
On , in the camp at Połaniec, Kościuszko issued a proclamation granting the peasants personal freedom, security of tenure on their land, and a reduction of labor obligations by one third to one half. Most of the nobility did not carry it out. A year later the Commonwealth ceased to exist, and serfdom in Galicia was abolished only in the spring of 1848 — fifty-four years after this scene.
Wojciech Bartos Głowacki, who stands by the captured cannon in this painting, was killed two months later at Szczekociny. Kościuszko himself was gravely wounded at Maciejowice on and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. When Matejko was finishing the canvas in 1888, it could not be written about in Warsaw even critically — Russian censorship forbade any mention.
—Wojciech Bartos Głowacki, ensignkilled at Szczekociny, June 1794 — two months after this scene
The canvas has no commander of the opposing side — Gen. Alexander Tormasov — and not a single fallen peasant. All the dead in the painting wear Russian uniforms. This is not a report of the battle; it is a painting about how the village entered Polish history.
Painting, not reportage
What did not happen on April 4
The sukmana
Kościuszko did not fight at Racławice in a peasant sukmana — he put it on after the battle, as a gesture toward the scythemen, and in that dress he entered the iconography. Matejko kept to the facts here and dressed him in a uniform, giving up the best-known image of the Naczelnik.
The cap
The story of Bartos plugging the cannon’s touchhole with his cap comes from tradition, not from a battle report. Matejko settled it as a painter: the cap already lies on the barrel; the deed itself we do not see.
The people
Hugo Kołłątaj, whom the descriptions place among the riders, was not at Racławice. Old explanations of the painting also name Madaliński, Zajączek, Wodzicki, Dembowski, and Taszycki — with no agreement on which face belongs to whom.
The place
Racławice lies in open, rolling country; the dark pine forest on the left is the painter’s compositional invention. Matejko went there in August 1886 and drew the landscape from life — and then subordinated it to the light of the painting.
History of the painting
From the advance to the Sukiennice
1883–1884A jubilee committee raises money for a painting by Matejko for Kraków and pays two advances — 20,000 and 15,000 guldens. The commission was to be Sobieski at Vienna; the painter, however, presented it to Pope Leo XIII.
1885The compositional sketch is made (now in the National Museum in Wrocław); six pencil drawings also survive.
August 1886Matejko travels to Racławice to see the battlefield and the surrounding landscape.
February–March 1887The canvas is ordered in Paris; on March 12 it is hung in the studio on Matejko Square. On March 25 the committee pays a third advance — 20,000 guldens.
1887–1888Work with interruptions; in February 1888 it is halted by the painter’s serious illness. The painting is finished at the end of April 1888. The frame costs 3,000 guldens.
April 27–29, 1888The canvas is moved from the studio to the National Museum and opened to the public. In ten days more than 6,300 people see it.
May 14, 1888Ceremonial presentation of the painting to the city in the Sukiennice. The subscription covered Galicia, the Poznań region, Royal Prussia, Silesia, and Bukovina, as well as England, Sweden, Turkey, Australia, and America — 49,807 guldens in all.
1888–1889The painting travels to Lwów and Poznań, in 1889 to Vienna, and in May 1889 to the Exposition Universelle in Paris.
1888–1889Juliusz Kossak makes a watercolor version of the composition; a chromolithograph after it sells 12,000 copies in a few months and goes into a second printing.
1894On the centenary of the battle, Wojciech Kossak and Jan Styka paint the Racławice Panorama in Lwów — today in the National Museum in Wrocław.
todayThe canvas hangs in the Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art in the Sukiennice, in the Matejko Room, opposite The Prussian Homage.
Where it hangs
The Sukiennice
The painting has been in Kraków since the day it was made — it has never had another home. It hangs in the Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art in the Sukiennice (Cloth Hall), a branch of the National Museum in Kraków, in the room devoted to Matejko. The Sukiennice, rebuilt in 1875–1879 by Tomasz Pryliński, then received on its upper floor the first Polish public museum — opened in 1883, five years before this canvas.
Matejko gave the painting to the city in place of Sobieski at Vienna, which he had presented to the pope. To the committee he explained it in a single sentence: “I have resolved, in exchange for Sobieski, to give the nation what may be dearest to it, what I myself have loved most ardently since childhood — and so, Kościuszko at Racławice.” Six years later, on the centenary of the battle, Lwów answered with the Racławice Panorama — Kraków already had its own.
Tableau vivantThe peasants from the Kraków region who posed for Matejko as the scythemen appeared, after the canvas was finished, in a tableau vivant in Kraków arranged after this composition. The evening, organized by the Artistic and Literary Circle, drew more than four thousand spectators and brought in 630 guldens.
Detail of the right part of the canvas: the Ecce Homo banner above the captured cannons — the highest point of the composition. National Museum in Kraków · public domain
The film plays only after a click, from the youtube-nocookie.com domain — until then the page makes no connection to YouTube. Without consenting to playback: open the film on YouTube (from 44:06). Material of the Polonia Information Agency; no subtitles have yet been prepared for this film.
Sukiennice, Kraków
Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art, the Matejko Room. The painting has hung there since 1888; admission is included in the Sukiennice ticket.
The 1885 sketch for the painting, and in a separate rotunda the Racławice Panorama by Kossak and Styka from 1894 — the second great version of the same battle.
National Museum in Kraków, Kościuszko at Racławice — data on the work: dimensions, dating, inv. no. MNK II-a-151, reproduction zbiory.mnk.pl
National Museum in Wrocław, Sketch for the painting “Kościuszko at Racławice” (1885) — an earlier stage of the composition mnwr.pl
Marian Gorzkowski, Wskazówki do najnowszego obrazu Jana Matejki „Kościuszko pod Racławicami” (1888) — explanation of the figures written down by the painter’s secretary — the basis of all later identifications
Halina Blak, study of the painting; Franciszek Ziejka on Matejko’s journey to Racławice — history of the commission, the committee’s advances, the presentation on May 14, 1888, the exhibition tour
“Z krakowskiej kolekcji,” Patriotyczny Kraków — chronology of the work 1885–1888, attendance at the Museum, Matejko’s words on the exchange for Sobieski patriotycznykrakow.pl
Wikipedia (PL/EN), article on the painting — survey of the literature, exhibitions 1888–1889, Kossak’s reproductions, Russian censorship pl.wikipedia.org
Polonia Information Agency, Kościuszko: The Man Who Was Ahead of His Time — biographical film about the Naczelnik www.youtube.com
The numbering of the frames is our own — Matejko left no key sheet of the kind Trumbull drew up for his canvases. Frames marked with a solid outline describe what can be seen on the canvas; a dashed marker indicates a name taken over from old explanations of the painting (Gorzkowski and the later literature) that cannot today be verified against a specific face. Facts about the battle and the history of the painting were checked against the museum sources and studies listed above.
Concord Hymn — The Shot Heard Round the World
Lyrics · Ralph W. Emerson · Arrangement · P. Białobrzycki
Would you like to listen to a piece in the spirit of July 4 while browsing?
Concord Hymn — The Shot Heard Round the WorldLyrics · Ralph W. Emerson · Arrangement · P. Białobrzycki
0:00 / —:—
Cookies
By default this site uses only files essential to its operation (consent, accessibility and music settings) — no profiling, no tracking cookies. With your consent we enable anonymous visit statistics (Plausible: cookieless, EU servers).
Details in the Cookie Policy.
