Elizabeth Craven, Izabela Czartoryski and Polish Independence

If you list all the famous people Elizabeth Craven knew in the course of her life, the result is a panorama of the most remarkable and significant figures of her era. Artists, writers, actors, statesmen, diplomats, opera-singers, doctors, lawyers, military men, wits, philosophers, philanthropists, aeronautical pioneers... she seems to have known them all. She even met Napoleon.
She was one of the few English people of her time to travel to Poland and she was a friend of the most celebrated Polish woman of that epoch.


Portrait of Izabela Czartoryski by Alexander Roslin

Izabela Czartoryski was a novelist, art collector, horticulturalist and a revolutionary who mixed with Enlightenment thinkers and dared to challenge the foreign powers that had gobbled up Poland. She and her husband made their home the centre of resistance to Russian rule.


The result was that there soon wasn't much left of the home, which was a pity. She paid a high price for her principles and belief in independence.
This portrait shows her in old age.
Her importance to the history of Poland is attested by this recent biography of her, written in Polish, but let's hope a translation appears soon.

Biography of Izabela Czartoryska by Katarzyna Maria Bodziachowska.

In Krakow, there is actually a Czartoryski Museum, Poland's first public art gallery, founded by Izabela herself in 1796. She made her family's great wealth and art collection available to the public.


While she was in Poland, Elizabeth Craven also managed to meet the gentleman pictured below. His name was Stanislaus Poniatowski, and he was nominally King of Poland. He had not been elected by the nobility, in the traditional Polish fashion, but appointed by the Empress of Russia in return for doing her a few favours. 


Stanislaus Poniatowski, King of Poland, by Angelica Kauffman

 Well, you have to admit he's got good legs. He and the Czartoryskis didn't get on, since they were fierce patriots and he was the lapdog of a foreign imperialistic power. 
Nevertheless, Elizabeth Craven did manage to meet both of them when she was in Poland. To find out more about Elizabeth Craven and her extraordinary life, read
Elizabeth Craven: Writer, Feminist and European
by Julia Gasper. Vernon Press 2017.

http://www.czartoryski.org/museum.htm

 https://theculturetrip.com/europe/poland/articles/princess-izabela-czartoryska-founder-of-polands-first-museum/

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