Antoni Piotrowski

Antoni Piotrowski ( _bg. Антони Пьотровски, "Antoni Pyotrovski"; 1853–1924) was a Polish Romanticist and Realist painter.

Piotrowski was born in Nietulisko Duże in 1853 near Kunów, then in the Russian Empire (today in Poland), to a sheet iron worker. From 1869 on, Piotrowski studied painting with professor Wojciech Gerson. From 1875 to 1877 he was tutored in Munich by Wilhelm Lindenschmit the Younger and from 1877 to 1879 his teacher was Jan Matejko of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.

In 1879, Piotrowski arrived to the newly-liberated Principality of Bulgaria as a correspondent of the British issues "The Graphic" and "The Illustrated London News" and the French "Illustration" and "Le Monde Illustré". He moved to Paris only to return to Bulgaria in 1885 to join the Serbo-Bulgarian War as a Bulgarian volunteer. For his merits during the fighting he was honoured with an Order of Bravery.

During his time in the Bulgarian Army Piotrowski painted the Battle of Slivnitsa, the storming of Tsaribrod and the Bulgarian entry in Pirot. All his nine military works were purchased by the Bulgarian state and are exhibited in the National Museum of Military History in Sofia. He also published graphics from the war in various Western European illustrated issues. Among his works were also portraits of Bulgarian princes ("knyaze") Alexander of Battenberg and Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; Piotrowski was awarded an Order of Civil Merit by the latter.

Piotrowski returned to Bulgaria in 1889: he visited Batak and painted his epic canvas "The Batak Massacre". This painting of his won an award at the Plovdiv Fair in 1892. In 1900 Piotrowski returned to Poland and settled in Warsaw. In 1905, he was a war correspondent in Manchuria. He died in 1924 in Warsaw.

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