Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg

Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg
Stanisław Ostroróg, the younger, circa 1890
Born	Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg (1863-09-12)12 September 1863 London, England
Died	22 February 1929(1929-02-22) (aged 65)
Residence	France and United Kingdom
Nationality	Polish, British
Other names	"Stanisław Julian Ignacy Count Ostroróg", "Laryew", Lucien Waléry
Occupation	Photographer
Years active	1890-1925
Era	Belle Époque and 1920s
Known for	Pioneer in photography
Parent(s)	Count Stanisław Julian Ostroróg and Teodozja Waleria Gwozdecka
Relatives	Gustaw Gwozdecki

Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg – also known as "Walery”, "Stanislas Waléry", "Lucien Waléry", "Laryew" was a Polish photographer active in London and Paris between 1890 and 1925. After inheriting his father's name and photographic studio in London, he continued with portraiture for about a decade until the turn of the century when he moved definitively to Paris. There he achieved celebrity as an innovator and accomplished photographer of cabaret stars and of the female form.

Background

He was born on 12 September 1863 in London into a family of political migrants of Polish noble descent. He was the eldest child of Count Stanisław Julian Ostroróg, a British subject and his Polish wife, Teodozja Waleria, née Gwozdecka. His father was born in the Russian Partition of what had once been the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, not long after the November Uprising of 1830 which led to severe repression of the insurgents, of which the family had been part. After military training at the Page Corps, Saint Petersburg, Ostroróg senior served as an officer in the Imperial Guard in the Crimean War. While there, he came into contact with a British General and switched sides, but after a failed attempt to join the British forces, apparently on health grounds, was directed to the Polish cavalry division of the Ottoman Army, headed by General Zamoyski, whose adjutant he became in the rank of colonel.

After the war he decided to settle in London where he sought to develop his patent for a musical instrument and tried to make a living in publishing and writing poetry, without much success. He was granted citizenship in 1862 and left for Paris where he married. Taking up his earlier interest in photography, he headed with his young family to Marseille to set up a photographic studio. In 1871 the family moved back to Paris where Ostroróg continued his successful photographic career until 1878 when financial difficulties forced him to sell and the family eventually moved to London in the early 1880s. His first studio was in Conduit Street and later in Regent Street where he was joined by his son.^[1]

Early years

Although born in England, Stanisław junior was sent to Poland, presumably to relatives, to learn Polish while his parents returned to France where his father developed his photographic career. In 1871, during the Paris Commune, he was sent there for his schooling. In that period, his parents divorced and his father remarried. At around 18 years of age and following family tradition, he obtained a commission in the army, only this time in the Royal Artillery at Woolwich. This was short-lived as he evinced an interest in his father's business and resigned from the army. At his father's insistence, he went to Paris for two years to study the techniques of photography, including portraiture. He returned to England to rejoin his father, who by then was enjoying great success and found he was not needed in the studio and so accepted a proposal to go to Mexico for a year helping in the construction of a railway and opening up a colony. He spent the next few years travelling with a camera and survey instruments in Africa, to places like Natal and Zululand. The sudden death of his father from an aneurism brought him back to London, where he took over the management of his father's studio.^[2]

Photographic career

Josephine Baker

Ostroróg junior was inspired to learn photographic techniques by his photographer father. He had worked briefly alongside him in the London studio named after his mother, Walery Ltd. After his father's death, however, he found the business side a struggle and soon went into partnership with the ambitious young English theatrical photographer, Alfred Ellis (1854-1930) and began trading as Ellis & Walery from new premises in Baker Street until 1908. For four years between 1890 and 1894 he worked on developing a Heliogravure process for the reproduction of art, although that did not produce the results he desired until much later in Paris. In the meantime he continued with portraits of society people including royalty as his father had done earlier. The NPG records that Walery, father and son, is associated with 197 portraits, including Dan Leno and King George V, while Ellis has 180 portraits to his name, mainly of "theatrical royalty". They appear to have kept their authorship and sitters separate, while sharing studio facilities.^[3]

Around 1900, Stanisław Ostroróg opened a Paris studio on his own account, in his father's former premises, at 9bis rue de Londres, where initially he specialized in theatre and cabaret artists including Mata Hari, and produced cabinet cards. As his French business prospered he gave up his London interest. In the 1920s he focused on art photography and experimented with the figure of the model, entirely eschewing aspects of background and other perquisites. During this period he used the pseudonym "Laryew" and under that name produced a book of 100 heliogravures, entitled Nus - Cent Photographies Originales. He achieved greatest acclaim with his series of photographs of Josephine Baker, published in 1926, (some of which, by today's standards, may be adjudged as racist or exploitative).^[4] He also produced studies of the female nude destined for anatomy and art students.

Confusions arising from the name "Walery"

Death certificate of Charles Auguste Varsavaux, photographer at 9 bis rue de Londres in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg did not die on 20 April 1935. This date is the date of the death of Charles Auguste Varsavaux (Paris Archives). Charles Auguste Varsavaux died at 9 bis rue de Londres in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. This address is that of the photography studio of Count Stanislaw Julian Ostrorog (1830-1890).

This was because there were other Polish photographers with the given name "Walery", such as the quite distinct, Walery Ostroga, and also because the younger Ostroróg used among other pseudonyms, "Lucien Waléry", to produce "erotica" in Paris in the period 1900-1930. In addition, there is thematic confusion in the French national library in that subjects under "Walery" comprise portraits for the Societe de Geographie, Geographical Society of France as well as playbills for the Folies Bergère, while the Bibliotheque interuniversitaire de sante - French Inter-university Library for health, contains 64 portraits of eminent medical doctors, also catalogued under "Waléry".^[5] It is assumed by some that Lucien Waléry was not the younger Count Ostroróg. Others, like the photographic historian, Zygmunt Wielowiejski, and the French national library, regard "Lucien" as the younger Count Ostroróg working under yet another pseudonym, probably to distance himself from his more mainstream work.^[6][7] The "Lucien Waléry" pseudonym happens to meld with the name of "Charles Auguste Varsavaux", a photographer who took over the Walery Paris studio after Ostroróg and died on 20 April 1935. He also produced erotica, possibly with a view to cashing in on the similarity of the name.

Private life

He married Joyce Audrey Reed Fowke (1877-1930) in 1897 in Chelsea. They had four children. Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg died on 22 February 1929.

Museum and private collections

In 2005, the National Portrait Gallery, London, mounted an exhibition entitled "Victorian Women", featuring the work of Walery, father and son. In Paris the Musée d'Orsay holds 72 items by "Walery", mostly children, family groups and politicians and artists.^[8]

Gallery

• 
  Mata Hari
• 
  Oscar Wilde in 1892
• 
  Postcard of Feral Benga at the Folies Bergère
• 
  BAXONE, Ellen W Étoile
• 
  Woman with headdress,
  circa 1928
• 
  Henry Morton Stanley
• 
  Maurice Chevalier 1920s
• 
  A woman from the Folies Bergère, 1920

See also

• List of Poles

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stanislaw Walery.

• NPG Walery collection
• Victorian Women by Walery, National Portait Gallery

Bibliography

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lucien Waléry.

• Aneta Ostroróg, Znany – nieznany – zapomniany. Nieco informacji o Stanisławie Julianie Ostrorogu, „Dagerotyp” 2005, nr 14, s. 5-13.
• Walery, Stanislas. (1923) (born Stanisław Julian Ignacy, Count Ostroróg - 1863-1935)Nus. Cent photographies Originales de Laryew. Published Paris: Librairie des Arts Décoratifs, A. Calavas.
• Wielowiejski, Zygmunt (2011-06-29). "Słynne akty z lat 20-tych" (in Polish). Wirtualna Polska Kultura. Retrieved 2011-07-07.
• Zygmunt Wielowiejski, Raport w sprawie Ostrorogów – aneks fotograficzny, „Dagerotyp” 2008, nr 17, pp. 31-47. (in Polish)