A self-portrait of Maurycy Gottlieb enriched the POLIN Museum Permanent Exhibition

On the 11th of November 2021, the painting “Self-portrait in the costume of a Polish nobleman" has been considered lost until recently. It was discovered, brought, and sold at auction in 2019 by Desa Unicum. It is now part of the “1000 years of the history of Polish Jews" and will be available to see by the public at the POLIN Museum in Warsaw. 

Painted in 1874, the masterpiece was the artist's personal manifesto and a symbol of the Polish-Jewish social integration. Depicting himself in the costume of a Polish nobleman was not unintentional – the clothes were supposed to evidence him belonging to the Polish nation. “I am a Pole and a Jew, and I wish – if God gives – to work for both" – he wrote. 

An anonymous buyer acquired the painting in 2019 at a Desa Unicum auction, and just under a year ago, they donated it to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews 

After Gottlieb died at the early age of 23, the painting was sold for the first time. It was then bought by an unknown squire from the Kingdom. In the 1930s, it was part of the Jakob Felsen collection in Vienna, then a private collection in New York. Its whereabouts in the next 70 years remain unknown. It was only in 2009, that the Desa Unicum Auction House discovered the painting in New York and brought it back to Poland in 2019. 

Currently, the work is shown at the “Challenges of modernity 1772-1914" gallery, in the part devoted to the assimilationist tendencies among the Polish Jews.