Self-portrait

When Matejko painted this in 1892, Poland had been off the map for almost a century, partitioned among three empires. He had spent his career on vast canvases of its battles and coronations, keeping a nation's memory alive because the nation itself had no state. Here he sets all that pageantry aside. At 54 and in poor health, he looks straight out in a plain dark coat, brush in hand, just the man. He was still directing the School of Fine Arts in Krakow, where he had trained a generation of Polish painters. He died the following autumn, in 1893.