Jan Styka (1858 Lviv - 1925 Rome), Portrait of his wife Lucyna Olgiati, 1895.

oil, canvas, 72 × 58 cm light frame
Signed and dated l. g.: "Jan Styka 1895"

Exhibited:
- Charm of Women, Charm of Flowers, Sopot Auction House, June 24 - September 23, 2009.

Reproduced:
- "Czar of Women, Charm of Flowers," Sopot 2009; item 26, p.21

Jan Styka was married twice. His first love was Miss Maria Ochrymowiczówna - the daughter of the head of the post office, whom the artist had known since his school days. He married his beloved Musia Styka in Lviv on June 3, 1884. Unfortunately, just seven months after the wedding, the artist's beloved dies of dryness. As the artist himself recalled: "Unfortunately, in the seventh month after our wedding, her death occurred, poetic as her whole life, quiet as herself." Despair and doubt acceded to me, but resignation and feverish work began to heal the wound. (Czeslaw Czaplinski, "The Saga of the Styka Family," New York 1988, pp.24-25.)
Shattered by the loss of his beloved, he threw himself into artistic work. While his beloved wife was still alive, Styka took a job teaching drawing at Dr. Adrian Baraniecki's private school in Cracow. It was here that he met his second wife - Lucienna Olgiati. Miss Olgiati came from a well-known merchant family from Radomsko-Kelecie. Her father, Kacper Olgiati, who came from Radom, married Anna Stumpf - daughter of Chrystian Stumpf and Anna, née Seidl, some of the most distinguished citizens of Kielce, involved in the cultural, economic development of the city and also known for their charity.
The couple married on Easter, April 29, 1886, in Kielce. After the wedding, the couple settled in Paris "in Styka's studio on Avenuede Villiers like a pair of colleagues - because Ms. Stykowa painted as well." (Aleksander Malaczynski, "Jan Styka szkic biograficzny", Lviv 1930 p. 20.). The couple returned to Lucyna's native Kielce in 1889, as Styka himself recalled: "Here I am to chase a piece of bread, I thought, to do what I intended - never! I'd rather return to the country and, if only for a piece of dry bread, create what my soul desires. And then, in addition, a painful blow hit me, because I lost my first son, a 4-month-old baby, I became disgusted with Paris, I became disgusted with the boulevards, and I repeated to myself every day: "There is no Polish heart this ford. I decided to return to the country and settled in Kielce, surrounded by the warmth of my wife's family." (Aleksander Malaczynski, "Jan Styka szkic biograficzny", Lvov 1930 p. 20.) They settle in the classicist manor house of the Stumpf family, where Jan creates his studio. This is also where the couple's eldest sons Tadeusz and Adam are born.