This collection consists of approximately 180 charcoal portraits made by Leon Makielski between 1923 and 1961, with most dated between 1924 and 1931. About a third of the subjects of the portraits are former faculty and staff of the University of Michigan, where Makielski taught from 1915 to 1927. Other subjects include physicians, politicians, architects and golfers, among others. Notable subjects in the collection include Speaker of the House of Representatives Nicholas Longworth, Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur, Michigan governor Frank Murphy, Michigan State Supreme Court Justice Henry M. Butzel, Polish Ambassador to the United States Titus Filipowicz, and pro golfers Al Watrous and Walter Hagen. Many, though not all, of the portraits are signed. The collection also includes a spreadsheet identifying the subjects of the portraits and any known details about each of them (profession, association with the University, etc.).
Leon Makielski was born on May 17, 1885 in Morris Run, Pennsylvania to Alexander and Elizabeth Makielski, Polish immigrants who arrived in the United States in 1881. He spent much of his youth in South Bend, Indiana along with his eleven siblings. His artistic talent was evident from a young age, and in 1903 he was accepted as a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied until 1909. During his time there, Makielski was a four-time recipient of the John Quincy Adams Traveling Fellowship. In 1909, he traveled to Paris, where he remained for three years while continuing his studies at Academie Julian and Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. While in Paris, he became involved with the Giverny community of artists and drew inspiration from the landscape paintings of Claude Monet, who also painted in Giverny. He had paintings exhibited in Les Salons 1911 and 1912. His time in Paris provided ample opportunity to travel, and while there he made trips to the museums of Austria, Belgium, England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland.
Makielski returned to the United States in 1913 and eventually settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He continued to build a reputation and career as a painter of landscapes and portraits, and began teaching art at the University of Michigan in 1915. He also taught at the Meinsinger School of Art in Detroit. On July 13, 1921 he married Anna Schmitt, with whom he would have five children. Makielski continued teaching at the University until 1927 when he shifted his focus to full-time portraiture. He painted portraits of many University faculty and administrators between 1924 and 1931, several dozen of which are displayed in various University buildings. He also painted prominent professionals and businesspeople, as well as figures in state and local politics. Makielski died in 1974 at the age of 89.
He is remembered primarily as a portrait and landscape painter, but his body of work also contains many drawings and etchings. Some of his more significant portraits are listed in the Catalog of American Portraits maintained by the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. The Bentley Historical Library also houses a number of Makielski's oil portraits of University faculty and staff, three of which are in the Law School Photography and Art collection, and one of which (a portrait of Harry Hutchins) is cataloged separately.
