The London premiere of the catalogue of the Stanisław August collection

The album about the history of the royal collection of paintings of Stanisław August was presented at a promotional event in the United Kingdom. The publication was showcased in The London Wallace Collection which houses the collections of the Seymour-Conway family.

The promotional meeting dedicated to the album "The Stanisław August Collection of Paintings at the Royal Łazienki. Catalogue" took place on 20 May, at 6 p.m., in The Wallace Collection located in Hertford House (Manchester Square). The meeting was a result of joint efforts by the London Museum and the Royal Łazienki.

Readers taking part in the promotional event heard about the royal collection from Dorota Juszczak who designed the catalogue. The meeting was conducted by an eminent expert of the history of the 18th century - Professor Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski.

During his reign Stanislaw August - the "King-architect" - gathered impressive collections of paintings, sculptures and drawings. The number of canvasses alone was 2,478. Among them were outstanding works, including two paintings by Rembrandt "Girl in a Picture Frame” and "Scholar at a Writing Desk” (now displayed at the Royal Castle in Warsaw).

The first catalogue describing the royal collection was published in 1932 in Lviv and for over 80 years it was the only summary compilation of the Stanisław August collection. The author of the publication - Tadeusz Mańkowski, the most outstanding pre-war researcher concerned with the collection of the last king of Poland - traced the history of the collection creation and made an attempt of an overall assessment.

In 2011, The Royal Łazienki Museum, in cooperation with The Royal Castle in Warsaw and The National Museum in Warsaw, organised an exhibition entitled “Rembrandt and Others. The Royal Collection of Paintings of Stanislaw August”. For the first time since 1939, paintings originating from Łazienki, but displayed in three Warsaw museums, were gathered in the Palace on the Isle.

The work on the exhibition and the catalogue published at the time set a new direction for research on the royal collection, with the aim to prepare a scientific re-edition of the work of Tadeusz Mańkowski. The publication "Gallery of Paintings of Stanisław August in the Royal Łazienki. Catalogue" released in 2015 was part of this endeavour.