Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki

Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki
Polish: Portret konny Stanisława Kostki Potockiego
Artist	Jacques-Louis David
Year	1781
Medium	Oil on canvas
Movement	Neo-Classicism
Subject	Stanisław Kostka Potocki
Dimensions	304 cm × 218 cm (120 in × 86 in)
Location	Museum of King Jan III's Palace at Wilanów, Warsaw

Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki (Polish: Portret konny Stanisława Kostki Potockiego)^{[Note 1]} is an oil painting on canvas completed by the French Neo-Classical painter Jacques-Louis David in 1781. A large-scale equestrian portrait, the work depicts a Polish politician, nobleman, and writer of the Enlightenment Period, Stanisław Kostka Potocki. The artist shows Potocki on horseback and wearing the sash of the Polish Order of the White Eagle. As Potocki tips his hat in a welcoming gesture to the viewer, the horse bows, while a dog can be seen barking in the lower left-hand corner of the painting.

Potocki first encountered Jacques-Louis David in Italy during the artist's 1779–1780 Grand Tour, although the details surrounding the portrait's commission remain debated. Some historians believe Potocki directly requested it in 1780, while others suggest Ferdinand IV of Naples commissioned the work after Potocki impressed him by taming a wild horse. The portrait of Potocki was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1781 and brought to Warsaw sometime before 1801. That year, the work was transferred to the Wilanów Palace, built originally as a royal palace in the late 17th century for John III Sobieski, which had been owned by the Potocki family since 1799. In 1805, the palace became one of the first public art museums in Poland, displaying David's Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki alongside the rest of the Potocki family's art collection.

The painting was plundered by Nazi German forces in December 1944 and then transported to Germany. In 1952, Soviet officials informed the Polish government (by then, the Soviet-aligned Polish People's Republic) that the portrait was among numerous other works from the Wilanów collection that had been restituted by the USSR in the war's aftermath. In 1956, David's painting was officially returned to Poland and placed in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw. In 1990, following the end of communist rule in Poland, it was transferred back to Wilanów and put on permanent display. Now part of the state-owned Museum of King Jan III's Palace, Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki has been described as one of David's masterpieces,^[1][2][3] marking the return of equestrian portraiture to European painting of the late 18th century.

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