Purchases (R189, R210) 1960, (R313) 1961, (R1201) 1962, (R2738, R2767) 1965, (R4731) 1969
Open for research. A minimum of twenty-four hours is required to pull art materials to the Reading Room.
Helen Young, 2006
Feliks Topolski, a visual chronicler, portrait artist, illustrator, and author, was born in Warsaw, Poland, on August 14, 1907, the only child of actor Edward Topolski and Stanislawa Drutowska. He was a student at the Mikolaj Rey School. He studied at the Warsaw Academy of Art from 1927 to 1932, during which time he also served as a cadet at the Artillery Officers' School. While still a student, he contributed drawings to the periodical
Topolski spent time studying on his own in France and Italy before traveling to England in 1935 to record George V's Silver Jubilee for a Polish magazine. He remained in London and connected with the group that included Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, J. B. Priestley, Anthony Powell, and William Empson. He provided illustrations for
During World War II Topolski worked as a war artist and served as a Polish army officer. He was wounded in the London Blitz, accompanied patrol duty in the Arctic, fought with the Polish 2nd Corps in Italy, traveled to the Russian front, Burma, and China, accompanied the allied troops into France and Germany, witnessed the liberation of the prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and attended the Nuremberg trials. Topolski's drawings from the war were published in three books:
Topolski became a British subject in 1947. In the years after the war he traveled to India at the invitation of Pandit Nehru, where he saw the end of the British Raj. He witnessed the liberation conflicts in Malaya and Indo-China. As he continued to create works that chronicled events, Topolski also established himself as a portrait artist. He produced murals, notably the
Among the works authored by Topolski are
Topolski established his studio in Waterloo in 1953; it was at this time that he began publishing his
Topolski married Marian Everall in 1944 (divorced 1975). They had a son, Daniel, and a daughter, Theresa. He married Caryl J. Stanley in 1975. He died August 24, 1989, in London.
Carver, Larry.
The Feliks Topolski Art Collection consists of works by Topolski. The collection is organized into three Series: I. Portraits, 1943-1962, II. Book Illustrations, 1939-1943, and III. Other Works, 1950-1968. Titles are transcribed from the items; cataloger's titles appear in brackets.
Series I. Portraits is subdivided into two subseries: A. 20th Century Literary Figures (HRC Commission), and B. Other Portraits. Both subseries are arranged alphabetically by portrait subject. Subseries A. contains twenty oil portraits from life of various authors, commissioned by the Ransom Center 1961-1962. Other Portraits comprises a large oil portrait of Bernard Shaw and three drawings.
Series II. Book Illustrations includes designs Topolski created for published editions of three of Bernard Shaw's plays:
The items in Series III. Other Works are five lithographic issues of
The Ransom Center has an almost complete run of