In 1820 in Warsaw Natan Glücksberg published a French edition of a widely-read work by Józef Wawrzyniec Krasiński entitled Guide du voyageur en Pologne et dans la République de Cracovie (the Polish edition was released a year later), illustrated with a set of ten aquatints by Fryderyk Krzysztof Dietrich (1779–1847), a printmaker active in Warsaw, based on drawings by Jakub Sokołowski (1784–1837). One of the picturesque, sepia-shaded prints depicts the Wilanów Palace with its distinctive high gate, seen from the driveway.
At the time when the aquatint was made the Wilanów estate, including the palace and its furnishings, fittings and “everything found inside”, had been owned already for over twenty years by Count Stanisław Kostka Potocki and his wife Aleksandra née Lubomirska. It became their property as a result of an agreement concluded on 19 September 1799 between Duchess Izabela Lubomirska née Czartoryska and her daughter, the aforementioned Aleksandra. The assumption of the Wilanów estate by Stanisław Kostka Potocki was a turning point in the history of the residence. Potocki’s exceptional collector’s passion, his extensive knowledge of history and archaeology, great interest in European and Far Eastern art contributed to a considerable enlargement of the collection of art and science amassed in the Wilanów Palace and further resulted in the introduction of various alterations both inside and outside of the edifice. The count also organized anew the Wilanów garden devastated after 1794; he had it enlarged and recomposed in line with contemporarily fashionable landscape English gardens.
Le Château a Villanow by Fryderyk Krzysztof Dietrich counts among the most romantic prints executed in metal techniques in 1800–1850, testifying to the appearance of the residence. The palace silhouette of beautiful proportions, set against a distant, dense forest and an overcast sky, was enlivened in the foreground by trees symmetrically arranged on both sides and an elaborate figurative staffage. The collection of the National Museum in Warsaw contains a unique etched outline of the described composition, signed with a symbol of a key, characteristic for the artist, and also his true signature in mirror image, corrected with ink and gouache perhaps by Dietrich the father. The said outline was a gift of the Dietrich family for the museum and was presented in Warsaw in 1933 at the jubilee exhibition commemorating inter alia the Relief of Vienna.
The vast nineteenth-century iconography of the Wilanów Palace contains a number of stylistically similar drawn and painted equivalents of the discussed aquatint by Dietrich the father, only created slightly later. Lost in a great majority today, they are watercolours by Willibald Richter and oil paintings by Wincent Kasprzycki.
Fryderyk Krzysztof Dietrich, based on a drawing by Jakub Sokołowski: View of the Wilanów Palace, aquatint, publ. 1820.