Jonas Rustemas

Place: Constantinople

Born: 1762

Death: 1835

Biography:

Jonas Rustemas, also known as Jan Rustem, was a painter of Armenian ethnicity who lived and worked in the territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was born in Constantinople in 1762 and as a young orphan boy was sponsored by Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, who invited him to the Commonwealth around 1774. He studied art in Warsaw under the tutelage of Jean-Pierre Norblin de La Gourdaine and Marcello Bacciarelli. Between 1788 and 1790, he moved to Germany and became a freemason. He returned to the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth in 1790 and lived for some time in Warsaw before moving to Vilnius. He started working for Vilnius University in 1797 and became a professor of painting in 1819. He retired in 1826 but continued to give lectures until his death, which occurred near Dūkštas, Lithuania. Among his successful students were Taras Shevchenko, Józef Oleszkiewicz, Kanuty Rusiecki, and Michał Kulesza.