Józef Mehoffer (1869-1946) was an eminent artist of the Young Poland movement, a painter who created polychromes, stained glass, graphics, and drawings. His house, referred to as ‘The Pine-Cone Palace’ in bygone days on account of the pine-cone motifs which weave their way through the interior décor, was built post-1850 on the site of a wooden manor house that had been razed by fire. The current form of this two-storey house, with its central staircase and terrace opening onto the garden, came about as the result of conversion work carried out in 1873 on the basis of a design by the architect Antoni Łuszczkiewicz. It was not until 1932 that Józef Mehoffer bought the building and it was transferred to the National Museum in Krakow by the painter’s heirs in 1986 to serve as a biographical museum. Ten years later, it was opened to the public.
The exhibition is housed on the ground floor and in rooms on the first floor, where, inasmuch as is possible, the interior has been recreated to appear as it would have done in Mehoffer’s time. This was achieved primarily thanks to items gifted and deposited with the Museum for safekeeping by the painter’s family, including, for example, collections of fabrics, Japanese wood engravings, and foreign ceramics, as well as numerous works of art by Mehoffer himself; pictures, stained glass, drawings and designs for monumental paintings. In 2003, the Mehoffer Garden, designed by the artist over the course of many years, was opened to the public.