Anna Rajecka

A girl with a dove (Dziewczyna z gołąbkiem),
(Allegory of lost innocence), 1790

Portrait of Ignacego Potockiego, 1784

Anna Rajecka (1762–1832), was a Polish painter and drawing artist.

Anna Rajecka was raised as a protegé of king Stanisław August Poniatowski of Poland. It was believed at the time that she was his illegitimate daughter. In 1783, she was enrolled at his expense at the art school for females at the Louvre in Paris. She was the student of Louis Marteau, Marcello Bacciarelli and likely Jean-Baptiste Greuze. The purpose of the Polish monarch for paying for her education was that she should return to Poland and become a professor of art, but she chose to remain in Paris after her marriage in 1788. In 1791, she became the first Polish female to have her work represented at the Paris art exhibition. During the Reign of Terror, she fled from Paris to Clermont-Ferrand. She became blind in 1824.

Anna Rajecka painted the circle around the Polish royal court in Poland, and was commissioned by the local Paris aristocracy after her move to France. She performed mainly portraits, both drawings and paintings in soft pastel.

References

• Stefan Kozakiewicz, Polish Painting. Enlightenment. Classicism. Romanticism, Warsaw, 1976.