born at Dorpat, to Florence to study. There the boy fell in with the now famous German painter Lenbach, who was studying in Italy under the patronage of Count Schack. Count Schack was a German nobleman of colassal wealth, and a great art collector, who during his lifetime encouraged and supported many struggling young artists whom he esteemed to be of merit, and when he died, a couple of years ago, bequeathed his palace and his matchless collection of pictures in Munich, Bavaria, to the nation as a public museum. Lenbach, who was a favorite of the Count's, introduced the young Russian to him, and argued so eloquently in his favor that the Count, who had arranged already to send Lenbach to Spain to study the old masters there, sent his friend with him, defraying all his expenses also. This was the turning pont of de Liphart's career.

Hendrik de Siemiradzki is of Polish birth, from 1843. The place of his nativity was a village in the province of Grodno called Siemirad, from which he takes his surname, the name of his family being plain Hendrik. His father was a small official under the Russian Government, and sent him to Charkoff to become a professor of natural history at the college there. The boy was a diligent student, but the necessities of his education caused him to learn to draw, and in doing so the art spirit which was latent in him was aroused. When he had, with honor, completed his course in natural history, he went to St. Petersburg and entered himself as a student of art at the Imperial Academy. His first works were drawings in monochrome, crayon, pencil, india-ink, sepia, and these, in 1870, were found so meritorious by the professors of the Academy that they allowed him the Imperial stipend upon which he could travel and study in Europe. He visited Paris and then settled in Munich, where he became a pupil of Piloty, and won his rank among the foremost of his fellows.

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Chapter 6 Text

Henryk Hector Siemiradzky