Jewish Woman with Oranges
Aleksander Gierymski (1850 to 1901) · About 1880 to 1881
An old woman in a dark shawl and headscarf stands on a Warsaw embankment holding two baskets of oranges, the fruit glowing like lamps against her grey clothes. Behind her the Vistula is a wash of pale light, with the roofs of the Praga district on the far bank. Her face is lined and tired, and she looks slightly past you, waiting for a customer who has not come. She is a street seller from the Jewish quarter of Powiśle, and Gierymski painted her with a directness and dignity that no Polish painter had brought to such a subject before.
Gierymski was the most stubborn realist of his generation, obsessed with light. Look at the oranges: each one is built from a dozen touches of orange, yellow and red, and the way the light falls on them makes them the true subject of the picture. The woman's black shawl is painted in blues and browns, and the whole canvas is unified by the silvery river light. Gierymski spent years on the streets of Powiśle painting the poor, the porters and the market women, and the paintings from this series, made around 1880, are the closest Poland came to Impressionism at the time.
The painting has a dramatic modern history. It disappeared from the museum during the Second World War, presumed stolen by the Germans, and for sixty five years was thought lost. In 2010 it surfaced at a small auction house near Hamburg and was recognised by Polish specialists; after negotiations it was returned to Warsaw in 2011 and restored. It now hangs among the museum's other Gierymskis, and its return was celebrated as a national event.
Did You Know? The painting was found in 2010 at a provincial German auction house, listed with an estimate of a few thousand euros, and returned to Poland the next year.
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