„Revue najstarszy w Europie pod względem sztuki” – Norwid w kręgu pisma „L’Artiste”.
The oldest European revue in the area of art” – Norwid in the circle of the magazine “L’Artiste”

Summary/Abstract: An important thread of Norwid’s relationship with the 19th-century press is his collaboration (between 1866 and 1868) with the prestigious French magazine “L’Artiste”, the oldest European art review, whose editor at the time was Arsène Houssaye. In the early 1860s, the magazine started the period that was later called “the renaissance of etching”. However, Norwid did not submit his etchings to the editor until 1866, when real estate investments forced Houssaye to significantly reduce the number of prints published in “L’Artiste”, which explains the two-year-long problems with editing Norwid’s engravings (finally L’Artiste published Figure de caractère/Sibylla in February 1868 and Le Prisonnier/Un Martyr in March 1868) together with an anonymous favourable review, whose author (possibly Houssaye himself) found trace influences of Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Rembrandt in Norwid’s style. The result of this promotion of the Polish artist was a series of artistic successes in Paris, consolidating Norwid’s position in the international art world, while in the domestic context – a much less satisfactory dialogue with J. I. Kraszewski.

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