Lorentz, Stanisław; Rottermund, Andrzej: Neoclassicism in Poland (Warsaw, 1986)

Warsaw, Royal Castle, draft design for reconstruction, J. Fontana, 1772

named Adam, and hence called the Adams’ style. Great Britain contributed greatly to the
development of neoclassicism, and its effect on the artistic culture of Europę in the łast thirty.
years of the 18th century included not only architecture and arćhitectural decoration, but also
painting, garden architecture, artistic gardening and fashion in dress.
In Russia, the neoclassical trend in the arts began in the middle of the 18th century and
developed mainly in St. Petersburg and Moscow and the surrounding areas, reaching in the
first half of the 19th century a great monumentalism of design in planning, architecture and
gardening. In Sweden, the individuality of its own version of neoclassicism was expressed in
the name of the style: Gustaviansk, after the King. In the United States of America, the
neoclassical style, called Colonial (sińce the style was formed still under the British colonial
rule), spread very widely and was considered the national style, as a result of the fact that the
first public buildings were executed in it.
In the second half of the 18th century neoclassicism spread as a style to almost the whole of
Europę. Although it derived from the same sources and was based on the same theoretical
premises, it took different forms in different countries.
In Poland, neoclassical art developed between about 1760 and 1830 -rthese time limits have
most freąuently been accepted. Over that long period of 70 years, Poland went through
fundamental political, social, economic and cultural changes, while the arts underwent
continuous evolution. The art which developed under the Polish State before the loss of
independence after the third partition of Poland in 1795, and was linked with the Polish
Enlightenment, has been distinguished as the first period. The next period covered the art
between 1795 and 1807, when there was no centre of Polish rule, nor State patronage in the
arts. The beginnings of a new cultural policy can be discerned in the period of the Duchy of
Warsaw, in 1807-1815. Neoclassical art was expressed in new forms at the time of the
Kingdom of Poland, between 1815 and 1831, when State patronage was active on a large scalę.

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