The Polack School

The art school of Polack was formed by the Jesuit educational system with opening a Collegium in 1579. Initially, the artistic specialties existed for the needs of the school theatre and decorating festive ceremonies. In the 18th century a course of architecture was introduced. At the same time, portrait painting was developing fruitfully. Portrait galleries were organised at the Jesuit and Dominican monasteries. In the early 1770s, an outstanding artist of the late Baroque Szymon Czechowicz worked in Polack. At the end of the 18th century, a collection of European paintings was formed at the Polack Collegium. In 1785 an architect, mathematician, musician, philologist, and physician Habriel Hruber (1740–1805) arrived in Polack. He essentially widened the limits of artistic education, created a fine basis for it.

From 1812 till 1820, the Collegium was reformed into the Jesuit Academy which had all the rights of a university. Annually, along with the exams, exhibitions were organised and talented students were sent abroad. The famous portraitist Walenty Wankowicz (1800–1842) studied for 6 years in Polack Jesuit Academy.

After the Jesuit Academy was closed, the Piarists’ Lyceum was transferred from Vicebsk and located in the Academy’s former buildings. There the founder of academic still life, landscape-painter and portraitist Ivan Hrucki (1810–1885) started his art career.

The School of Polack emerged and developed at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries and passed through the following styles: Baroque (S. Czechowicz , the portraits of the Dominicans), Classicism (H. Hruber, F. Tolstoy, R. Slizen), Romanticism and Biedermeier (W. Wankowicz, K. Baroŭski, T. Bychkoŭski, I. Hrucki).