Portrait of Aleksander Waszkowski, member of the National Government in 1863

Simmler worked in oil on canvas, employing the smooth, highly finished brushwork characteristic of academic portraiture. The palette is restrained, dominated by browns, blacks, and warm neutrals that unify the figure with his surroundings. Light falls evenly across the sitter, creating soft shadows that model the facial features and fabric without dramatic chiaroscuro. The artist paid particular attention to the careful modeling of the face and the texture of materials, from the dark suit to the white shirt. The oval composition is framed by a warm brown tone at the outer edges of the canvas, a device that contains the image and focuses attention on the sitter. The overall handling reflects the influence of the Munich School, with which Simmler had connections through his training and travels, combined with the formal conventions of French costume painting that he adapted to Polish historical subjects.

The portrait was painted in 1864, immediately following the suppression of the January Uprising, a moment when portraying members of the National Government carried significant political resonance. The work entered the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw, where it remains today. While specific details of its commission and early ownership have not been preserved in the available sources, the museum's accession of the painting reflects its institutional commitment to preserving art related to Polish national history. The painting has been exhibited and reproduced in contexts related to both Simmler's oeuvre and the visual documentation of the 1863 uprising.

Józef Simmler (1823-1868) came from a wealthy German Protestant family, and his affluent upbringing enabled him to study in Dresden, Munich, and Paris. He is best known for Death of Barbara Radziwillowna (1860), which achieved immense popularity when exhibited by the Warsaw-based Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in 1861. Simmler's major contribution to Polish art lay in the humaneness his paintings evoked; he was particularly gifted as a portraitist and adapted French styles of costume painting to produce works that allowed viewers access to the Polish past. His paintings conveyed not merely historical reproduction but emotional qualities of compassion, dread, and tenderness. The portrait of Waszkowski belongs to a period when Simmler was already established as a leading painter of Polish subjects, and it participates in the broader nineteenth-century project of using portraiture to commemorate political figures and preserve national memory during a time of partition and foreign domination.

The portrait remains in the National Museum in Warsaw as a tangible connection to the 1863 January Uprising and its leadership. As a work by Simmler, it forms part of the oeuvre of an artist whose Death of Barbara Radziwillowna became a canonical image in Polish art. The painting continues to serve as a historical document, reproduced in scholarly and commercial contexts alike, and it contributes to the understanding of how portraiture functioned as a mode of political commemoration in partitioned Poland. Simmler's broader legacy includes his influence on subsequent Polish painters through his synthesis of European academic techniques with specifically Polish subject matter, and his descendants' connections to Polish public life, including his grandson Henryk Leon Strasburger, a delegate to the League of Nations.