Władysław Czartoryski

Prince Władysław (Ladislaus) Czartoryski (July 3, 1828 – June 23, 1894) was a Polish noble, political activist in exile, collector of art, and founder of the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków.

Life

Son of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski and Princess Anna Zofia Sapieha, he married Maria Amparo, Countess of Vista Alegre, daughter of Queen Maria Christina of Spain by morganatic relation to the Augustín Fernández Muñoz, Duke of Riansares, on March 1, 1855 in Malmaison near Paris.

Their son August Czartoryski contracted tuberculosis at the age of 6, from his mother who died soon thereafter. August (known as "Gucio") had as a tutor Joseph (later Saint Raphael) Kalinowski. Władysław hoped that his son would pursue a diplomatic career, but Gucio went against his father's wishes and joined the religious order of the Salesians. Gucio was ordained a priest in 1893, but neither his father nor anyone else in the family attended the ceremony, and he died a year later of tuberculosis at the age of 34. Gucio was beatified in 2004, on track to becoming a saint himself.

On January 15, 1872 Prince Władysław married his second wife, Princess Marguerite Adelaide of Orléans, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and granddaughter of King Louis-Philippe of France, with whom he had two more sons in 1872 (Adam Ludwik Czartoryski) and 1876.

Prince Władysław was an activist of Hotel Lambert. From 1863-1864 he was the main diplomatic agent of the revolutionary National Government (Rząd Narodowy) with the English, Italian, Swedish and Turkish governments.

He was also owner of the great family collection of art: paintings, sculptures and antiquities. He was greatly interested in Egyptian art, making his purchases at sales in Paris and directly in Egypt. He donated some objects to the Polish Library in Paris and also other archeological artifacts to the Jagellonian University. In 1871, he donated objects to the Polish Museum in Rapperswil, Switzerland.

In 1865 he organized an exhibition of the "Czartoryski Collection" in the "Polish Room" of the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.

In 1878 he reopened the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, which was founded by his grandmother Izabela Czartoryska in 1801 in Puławy but closed after the November Uprising. He died in Boulogne-sur-Seine and was buried in the Sieniawa Family crypt.