Jan Frantsevich Tsionglinsky was born into the family of Polish noblemen in Warsaw on February 8 (20), 1858. In 1876 he finished the 3rd Warsaw Classical School. In 1876 — 1878 Jan studied at the Warsaw University, where he studied medicine and natural science according to one source and at the physical and mathematical faculty according to another source. At the same time he attended Wojciech Gerson's Art Studio and then the Warsaw Drawing Course. In 1879 Jan Tsionglinsky settled and forever stayed in St. Petersburg. He studied in the Imperial Academy of Arts from 1879 to 1885. In 1894 he continued his art studies in Paris.
Jan Tsionglinsky became one of the founders of the World of Art association, a professor of the Drawing School at the Imperial Society for Encouragement of Arts from 1888, a teacher in the life study class of the Higher Art School under the Academy of Arts from 1902 and its full member from 1911.
Jan Tsionglinsky visited Italy, Spain and the Central Europe several times, as well as Egypt, Greece, India, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco, Palestine and other countries.
Critics considered Jan Tsionglinsky one of the convinced followers of ideas of Impressionism.
The art heritage of Jan Tsionglinsky totals more than one thousand works. His last will was to send all his works to Poland, and so after 1922 the biggest part of his heritage was distributed among the museums of Poland and modern Ukraine. Ivan Bilibin, Lev Bruni, Piotr Buchkin, Viktor Vesnin, Eugene Lanceray, Mikhail Matyushin, Pavel Filonov, Ivan Shulga and many other outstanding artists were among his students.