Walery Eljasz-Radzikowski

Place: Kraków

Born: 1840

Death: 1905

Biography:

Walery Eljasz-Radzikowski (13 September 1841 – 23 March 1905) was a Polish painter, illustrator, teacher of fine arts and photographer active during the foreign Partitions of Poland. He studied painting in 1856-62 at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków mainly at the atelier of famous Władysław Łuszczkiewicz. He continued his studies in Munich for three years before his return in 1866. While in Munich, after convalescing from typhoid fever, Eljasz worked on behalf of the Polish insurrectionist Rząd Narodowy helping volunteers heading back to Poland for the January Uprising against the foreign yoke. After his return to Kraków, Eljasz served as a teacher of fine arts at local schools including at the Gimnazjum of St. Anne in 1872-91. He painted church frescos (Chochołów, 1871), illustrated books and magazines, designed historical costumes for theatre stage productions, and exhibited his works internationally. Eljasz-Radzikowski was a co-founder of one of the oldest tourist societies in Europe, the cultural Polish Tatra Society in 1873. He wrote the first-ever tourist guide to Tatra Mountains in 1870 called the Ilustrowany przewodnik do Tatr, Pienin i Szczawnic which he himself illustrated with lithographs and woodcuts initially, and eventually with his photographs also.