Anna Potocka (1779–1867)

Countess Potocka was born Anna Maria Eva Apolonia Tyszkiewicz into a family of Polish nobility. She was the only daughter of Louis Tyszkiewicz, Grand Marshal of Lithuania, and his wife Constance Poniatowska, a niece of King Stanislaw II August of Poland. She was raised in Bialystok under the care of a French governess at the court of her great-aunt, Countess Isabella Poniatowska Branicka, the king's sister. She was said to be well-read, intelligent, and beautiful. In 1805, she married Alexander Stanislaw Potocki, with whom she had three children. Her second husband, whom she married around 1817, was Colonel Stanislas Dunin-Wasowicz, a former adjutant to the Emperor Napoleon. They lived in Paris from 1851, but avoided the liberal faction of Polish exiles who gathered at the Hôtel Lambert. She kept diaries written in French from the years 1794 to 1820, an important historical source, which were edited and published 30 years after her death. Her travel journal Voyage en Italie (Journey to Italy) was also published around the same time. She was the subject of a famous 1794 portrait by Josef Grassi and miniature by Vincent Lesseura.