Satire and Comics by Jan Matejko

Poland’s great history painter without his great canvases: satirical drawings and caricatures from the collection of his own house on ul. Floriańska 41. The show runs until 31 January 2027 and has no separate ticket - your standard ticket to the Jan Matejko House covers it.

The National Museum in Krakow on the exhibition: (quoted from the museum’s own English page)

A special place is occupied by satirical drawings showing a different face of Jan Matejko: a man full of emotion and reflection, with a sense of humour, endowed with self-irony and distance. They are presented in the temporary exhibition ‘Satire and Comics by Jan Matejko’. The stories told by Matejko through drawing are a commentary on the reality around him. The works mock the pathos and celebrity of the world of the time, in which the famous artist often had to participate. He talked about it in a caricature, in a joke, in a somewhat disguised way - in the privacy of his home.

What to expect

This is a show of drawings, not paintings. They come from the branch’s own holdings, and the National Museum’s collection page singles out family caricatures as a special part of the house’s drawing collection. Admission comes with the branch ticket, so you see the exhibition on the same visit as the house itself.

The house earns the trip on its own. The first floor keeps the salon and boudoir with their original furnishings, plus a bedroom under a blue ceiling painted with stars. On the top floor is the reconstructed studio, with a large taxidermied horse that Matejko used as a model for his monumental canvases.

The museum publishes no works count, no room count and no curator’s name. The one drawing it shows online is described as a pencil sketch on beige paper. On the left stands a bearded man in a coat, holding a hammer. On the right is a crowd of women, men and children; one of them holds a small dog, others clap. It gives no title or date for the sheet.

The show opened on 15 May 2026, Museum Night in Krakow. The National Museum’s programme for that night lists a curator’s tour with it, led by Marta Kłak-Ambrożkiewicz, head of the Jan Matejko House. The evening before, she gave a free lecture at the house, “Oblicza Jana Matejki - artystyczne opowiastki z uśmiechem” (Faces of Jan Matejko - artistic tales with a smile).

Allow 60-90 minutes for the house and the drawings together. The route alone can be walked in 40 minutes, but reading labels and looking closely at the drawings takes longer.

Context

Jan Matejko (1838-1893) is the painter whose canvases, reproduced thousands of times over, still illustrate Polish history in school textbooks: “Skarga’s Sermon”, “The Battle of Grunwald”, “The Prussian Homage”. From 1873 he ran Krakow’s School of Fine Arts, where his pupils included Stanisław Wyspiański, Jacek Malczewski, Józef Mehoffer and Leon Wyczółkowski. He left more than 300 oil paintings and several hundred drawings and sketches.

The townhouse at ul. Floriańska 41 was his family home: he was born here, lived here with his family, worked and died here. In 1871 he bought out his siblings, took over the house and had it rebuilt over the next two years. After his death the Jan Matejko Society bought the building from the family, first showed the collection to the public in 1898, and in 1904 handed the museum over to the National Museum in Krakow.

Do not expect the big pictures here. The ones the National Museum owns hang, because of their size, in the Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art in the Cloth Hall (Sukiennice) on the Main Market Square. The house keeps the smaller things - sketches, studies, portraits of family and friends, personal objects - and the museum says that items outside its permanent display are shown in temporary exhibitions.

Tickets and time

• No separate ticket. The exhibition is included in branch admission: 18 PLN standard, 14 PLN reduced, 36 PLN family, 1 PLN for school pupils and students, free under 7. Buy at the desk or online through the National Museum in Krakow ticket shop .
• Hours: Monday closed, Tuesday 10:00-18:00, Wednesday to Sunday 10:00-16:00. Last admission is 20 minutes before closing, so from Wednesday to Sunday arrive by 15:00 (3 PM).
• Free Tuesday - unclear for this show. The museum’s price list makes Tuesday free for permanent exhibitions, and this one is temporary. The museum’s Polish branch page speaks more loosely of a free visiting day, and the exhibition page says admission is included in the branch ticket. The museum does not settle whether free Tuesday covers the drawings; ask at the desk before you plan around it.
• Tickets for the Cloth Hall, the Czartoryski Museum or the Main Building include the permanent display of the Matejko House. The price list does not say whether that extends to this temporary show.
• Crowds: Tuesday is the only late opening and the free day for the permanent display, so expect it to be busier than Wednesday to Friday.
• Guided tours: groups can book a guide for 170 PLN in Polish or 220 PLN in a foreign language, plus tickets. That is the Polish price list; the museum’s English price list and branch page still say 150 and 200 PLN, so confirm the price when you book.
• Sunday tours: the National Museum’s open Sunday tours rotate between branches. The Matejko House had one on 24 May, in Polish only, and the published schedule up to 22 November 2026 has no further date here.
• Access: the branch is not accessible to wheelchair users, and the studio is on the top floor of the townhouse.
• English on site: the museum publishes this exhibition page in English and rents audio guides (10 PLN) for the house in Polish, English, Russian, German and French. It says nothing about English labels for the drawings or whether the audio guide covers them.
• Who it is for: visitors who know Matejko’s history paintings and want to see what made him laugh; people who draw or read comics and are curious how a history painter handled caricature. Skip it if you have one day in Krakow and came for the big canvases - those held in Krakow are in the Cloth Hall, and the house with this show is a second-visit plan.

What the press says

A search on 23 September 2026 found no review in the Polish cultural press or in Krakow’s regional media. What exists are announcements based on the museum’s own text:

• Fakty Krakowa (8 June 2026, krystian): the short piece “Matejko bez pomnika” (Matejko off his pedestal) recommends the show as an easy stop on a walk through the centre. Entry is already in the branch ticket, it notes, and it names the National Museum as its source - article
• RMF Classic (undated, no byline): a listing in the station’s recommendations section that summarises the museum’s description - listing
• Karnet Kraków (undated): an entry in the city’s official culture calendar, with an English version - entry
• Niezła Sztuka (undated): an events-calendar entry with the show’s dates and the opening of the museum’s description - entry

Four entries, all informational; none assesses the show. It runs until January 2027, so a review may still appear.

Updates

• 2026-09-23 - checked against the National Museum’s Polish and English pages: dates (15 May 2026 - 31 January 2027) and prices (18/14 PLN) unchanged. The quotation is now the museum’s own English text instead of our translation of the Polish.
• 2026-09-23 - removed the claim of a standing Sunday tour series at this house: the “W samo południe” tours are a museum-wide cycle with no date here up to 22 November 2026. Added the gap between the guide prices on the museum’s Polish and English price lists.
• 2026-09-13 - checked against the museum’s own page: dates and prices unchanged. The museum still publishes no curator, no works count and no press materials.
• 2026-09-13 - corrected the museum quotation and the opening paragraph: the earlier version carried a paraphrased quote without Polish diacritics.

See also

• Sukiennice - Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art - where the National Museum’s large Matejko canvases actually hang; the other half of the same story.
• In the Paris Atelier of Stanisław Wyspiański and Józef Mehoffer - until 31 December 2026 at the Wyspiański Museum; two of Matejko’s own pupils, who went somewhere entirely different from their teacher.
• Józef Mehoffer House - another artist’s house in the National Museum’s network, with the same hours and prices; a good comparison with how a pupil lived.

Museum profile: Jan Matejko House .