[Unknown portrait of Bruno Schulz] Wolfgang BREUER (1895-1927), Portrait of young artist Bruno Schulz from Drohobych, 1919

ink, cardboard, 34 x 25 cm; signed in pencil p.d.: "Bruno S. Dr. 19" which means "Bruno Schulz, Drohobycz 1919".

Wolfgang Breuer is a young deceased artist from Berlin, whose dozens of drawings and prints were preserved by his Polish relatives. As an officer in World War I, he was in the territories of Lithuania and neighboring Courland, of which more than a dozen works have survived. When the war ended, he did not go to poverty-stricken and crisis-ridden Berlin, but went to Lviv, where rich relatives with landed estates lived. These were Jan Breuer (1841-1921) an economic activist, president of the Land Credit Society, and his sister Berta (married name Ziembicka), who had a daughter Maria married Jaroszynska and Sophia (married name Scipio del Campo). They received some of their cousin's prints as souvenirs, later found in Cracow. The most valuable of these is a portrait sketch by Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) a peer of Breuer. Since Breuer lived in Lviv he certainly visited art galleries and stores for artists where it was easy to meet Bruno Schulz from Drohobych. This drawing is a sketch for a lost portrait, which was probably in Schulz's apartment, because in the later period the artist drew small drawings on it, and while doing an ink test he pulled a brush across Schulz's cheeks and eyes, which gave an interesting effect. On the back is a pencil sketch of a nude model. Comparing the face from the drawing with the two attached photographs of Schulz gives a positive answer, although the photos are several years later, here Schulz has smaller curves on his head. An unknown portrait of the young Bruno Schulz, showing his friendship with the artist Breuer not previously described in the literature.