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Vogel, Zygmunt [pseud. Ptaszek]
(b Warsaw, 15 June 1764; d Warsaw, 20 April 1826). Polish painter, printmaker and teacher. He trained as a master builder and then from 1780 studied under André Lebrun (1737–1811) in the school of painting at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, as well as under Jakub Monaldi and Simon Bogumil Zug. In 1785 Vogel produced several watercolour copies of vedute of Warsaw by Bernardo Bellotto, which laid the foundations of his future career. He also became Bellotto’s first successor in the field of veduta painting. From 1785 Vogel painted over 100 vedute of the capital and its environs (e.g. Panoramic View of Warsaw from Praga, 1816; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), many of which, because of their detail and precision, were later used to reconstruct monuments destroyed during World War II. From 1787 until 1800, on the recommendation of Stanislav II Poniatowski, who appointed him his Government Illustrator, and later, on his own initiative, Vogel made several trips around Poland, painting views of castles and their ruins, and of large and small towns mainly in the Wisla River basin. From 1794 Vogel painted many landscapes in the King’s summer residence at Lazienki Palace near Warsaw. In addition to his royal commissions, Vogel painted several series of landscapes for wealthy families, recording the appearance of their palaces and parks, which were modelled on famous English landscape parks and gardens. He painted mainly in watercolour, but occasionally in India ink and sepia. He was also active as a printmaker, undertaking an edition of etchings of an enormous series of drawings entitled Zbiór widoków slawniejszych pamiatek narodowych (‘A collection of views of the more famous national relics’), whose first and only series—of 20 views by Jan Zachariasz Frey (1769–1829)—appeared in Warsaw in 1806. From 1800 Vogel was mainly occupied with teaching, culminating with his appointment in 1817 to the chair of perspective at the Fine Arts Department of the University of Warsaw. From 1810 he executed several state commissions for military and other forms of architecture. Vogel’s paintings expressed the new patriotic and romantic themes that characterized a nation striving for a sense of identity. The largest collection of his watercolours is housed in the National Museum in Warsaw and the Drawing Room of the University of Warsaw Library.
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