Leopold Loeffler

There he accepted a position as professor at the expanding School of Fine Arts, but nevertheless remained a prolific artist for the rest of his life. Loeffler died in Kraków in 1898. His work can be found in the National Museum of Poland, its regional branches and in the Lviv National Art Gallery

Leopold Loeffler studied at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Training under Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller is recorded. Wojciech Weiss, Stanisław Jarocki and Marian Wawrzeniecki are recorded as having studied under Leopold Loeffler. The recorded working language is Polish. The field of work recorded is painting. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait. Work by Leopold Loeffler is recorded in the collections of Belvedere, Silesian Museum in Katowice, National Museum in Warsaw, Kunsthistorisches Museum and Bratislava City Gallery.

• Name — Leopold Loeffler • Born — 27 October 1827 • Birthplace — Rzeszów, Poland • Died — 6 February 1898 • Place of death — Kraków, Poland • Training — Academies of Fine Arts in Vienna, Munich, Paris

Leopold Loeffler was born on October 27, 1827, in Rzeszów under the Austrian Partition, the son of an administrative officer Jan Loeffler (surname also Germanized as Löffler), and his wife Domicella née Dąbrowska. His father was an office manager locally before moving his family to Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) in order to take up the position of a district secretary. Leopold went to school in Radymno, where his uncle Filip Loeffler was a post-master. Upon graduation, he enrolled at the Department of Philosophy of the Lwów University. At about that time, he also rediscovered his interest in painting and in 1845 left the partitioned Poland for Vienna, to continue his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts there. For the next 30 years Loeffler lived abroad, mostly in Austria (known as Austria-Hungary since 1867), but also in Munich and in Paris, where he continued his studies at the local art academies. Galicia, where his family lived, became the easternmost province of the Habsburg Empire. Loeffler embarked on a successful career as an artist, painting victorious battle scenes for Archduke Rudolph among other prestigious commissions. His work was highly regarded by the court of Franz Joseph I of Austria and the Emperor himself, while his German-sounding name was also commercially advantageous. In 1866 he became a member of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. However, Loeffler left the imperial capital for Kraków in 1877, having been invited by Matejko to serve as Professor at the School of Fine Arts, expanded in 1873 as an independent institution of higher learning. Among his most prominent students were future luminaries of the Young Poland movement including Stanisław Wyspiański, Włodzimierz Tetmajer, Leon Kowalski and Wojciech Weiss. He died in Kraków on February 6, 1898, at the age of 70.

Although, Leopold Loeffler saw himself as the great supporter of freedom and national sovereignty, at least some of his commissions painted for the Austrian court inadvertently also glorified the military victories of the Habsburgs over less fortunate nations. In 1860 Loeffler produced a battle scene for Archduke Rudolf, showing the victorious Emperor Rudolph I of Germany in 1278, destroying the Czech ruler Ottokar II of Bohemia in the Battle on the Marchfeld (Suché Kruty) at Dürnkrut. The battle was lost in an ambush attack, a dishonorable act by the rules of knighthood. Most importantly, it also took away the Czech hopes of freedom for centuries to come. Such ideologically motivated depictions of imperial history of Austria-Hungary did not contribute to Loeffler's popularity in his native land under the foreign domination.