Tadeusz Rychter

Tadeusz Rychter with wife Bronisława, circa 1900. An undated, hand-written note on the photograph reads: The work has ravaged her health, and her husband, mistreated her. Frombork Museum Tadeusz Rychter (c. 1873 in Lviv – 1943 in Warsaw) was a Polish early twentieth-century artist best remembered for his watercolors of the Holy Land.

Rychter studied at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he became the contributing artist to the legendary Zielony Balonik art-and-literary cabaret. He married a fellow Cracovian artist Bronisława Janowska, but left her for a German artist from an aristocratic family, Anna May-Rychter, whom he met while in Munich. He was Catholic and could not obtain a divorce; they could not be legally wed, which may also explain their decision to settle in Palestine in 1920–1923.

In Palestine, Rychter earned a living restoring art in old churches, and selling watercolor paintings of Christian holy sites to tourists.