Jerzy Turnau (1869-1925) – exhibition in the Catholic University of Lublin Museum

Jerzy Turnau (1869–1925)

Born in Galik n.Dobczyce, the son of Henryk Jakub and Olawia de Semetycze Trzeciak. A landowning painter. His passion for painting began in his youth. He was advised by Mehoffer and Wyspiański. He began to study art in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna but he never finished. At the same time, he also studied agriculture at  Hochschule für Bodenkultur, also in Vienna. Following the will of his father, at the age of 24, he settled down in the landed estate in Mikulice n.Przeworsk.  He developed a passion for farming. Over time, he created a modern, innovative farm that attracted many visitors from Poland and abroad. He was the initiator and main founder of a school in Lviv. He also had an interest in writing, particularly about landowning and farming. He wrote a formative work, “On Cultivation of Land and Plants|, published in five volumes.  In the meantime, he continued to paint. Mostly portraits, landscapes, village scenes, sometimes battle scenes – albeit naive in composition. Many of his paintings and portraits were created during his second stay in Vienna with him family in 1014 and 1915, where they figured as Kriegsflüchtlinge.  He also painted in Mikulice towards the end of the First World War. At the time, his advisor was Roman Bratkowski, who hid with his wife in Mikulice after escaping Ukrainian-occupied Lviv.

His obituary srtated: “He had a thoroughly artistic nature, like no other combined the sober reality of life with its true poetry and beauty” (“Czas” 1925 no 250). Jerzy Turnau was the father of Stefan (his “Galician notes” have been published recently) and the grandfather of Jan, a publicist and a great grandfather of Grzegorz, a composer and singer.

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