Edward Aleksander Raczyński’s picture gallery

The collection was assembled by Edward Aleksander Raczyński, an art connoisseur and long-time president of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Kraków. He bought paintings from the 1880s to the 1920s, gathering almost 500 works. From the start he planned to show them in a publicly accessible building: he commissioned the first designs from Stanisław Borecki in 1896, but the gallery was built only in 1910, to a design by Mieczysław Powidzki.

Light enters from above through glass roofs on a steel structure made by the Cegielski factory. Of the 305 works that survived from the pre-war collection, the gallery now shows 297. The display was reconstructed from a guidebook of around 1926 and archival photographs, with paintings hung in two, three or even four rows.

The entrance hall holds realist works by the Polish "Munich school" painters, and three connected rooms show French, Belgian, Spanish, Norwegian and German artists, including Besnard, Zuloaga, Thaulow and Stuck. The largest room is filled with canvases by Malczewski, Gierymski, Podkowiński, Boznańska, Fałat and Wyczółkowski.