Gierymski’s painting was the most valuable Polish work of art lost during World War II. The painting went through incredible turns of fate and remained in Polish hands almost until the end of the war.
In the 1880s, Aleksander Gierymski gave the painting to his close friend, Prosper Dziekoński, a veteran of the failed January Uprising, a penniless nobleman working on the Vienna-Warsaw railway connection and older brother of Józef Pius, who later became a renowned architect. After his death in 1922, the painting passed to Dziekoński’s son-in-law, Ludwik Zagrodzki. Nominated as the director of the National Mint, Zagrodzki, perhaps driven by the rise of representative costs, auctioned the painting off in Dom Sztuki (editor’s translation: The House of Art) where it was bought by the National Museum in Warsaw. Even though in the beginning of the war the museum was ravaged by German historians of art who independently catalogued works of art for the Third Reich, Dagobert Frey, Hans Posse, Peter Paulsen, and SS-Sturmbannführer Kajetan Mühlmann, Żydówka z Pomarańczami managed to stay in Polish hands.
Even when the Germans took the Warsaw collection to Wawel Castle in Kraków in 1943, Żydówka z Pomarańczami luckily remained in Warsaw. It remains unknown when exactly the painting disappeared from the collection. It may have been stolen during the Uprising when German troops were stationed at the museum, since the faithful memoirs documenting the last days before the evacuation of the city written by Stanisław Lorentz, the museum’s director, do not even mention Gierymski’s painting. It may have ended up in the chaotic transport of the works of art to Fischhorn Castle in Austria organised on 6 October 1944 by SS-Obersturmführer Arnhardt.
There are several qualities making Żydówka z Pomarańczami an extraordinary work. Its author’s own high opinion of the painting may be its most important value. In December 1884, when Gierymski exhibited Żydówka z Pomarańczami in Vienna, he described the painting to the Dziekoński brothers:
Żydówka z Pomarańczami may have been the best painting (…). It’s incredibly vivid and colourful. I may be exaggerating, but if I ever go back to painting I’ll only work with big and medium figures – no landscapes.
It’s easy to gather from the second half of the above quote that the younger Gierymski was rarely satisfied with himself and his works. Żydówka z Pomarańczami is one of the few paintings which the painter deemed successful.
A different reason is the masterful execution of the painting. Of course, realist paintings were supposed to be a faithful depiction of the world, but the photographic precision of the painting is almost hyperrealistic, then an extremely rare quality in Polish painting. Even though it was rooted in the Warsaw realia, it should be formally classified as a work belonging to the Munich realist school (precisely characterised by its inclination towards hyperrealistic precision). Such grouping would be in fact natural, since it was there, that Gierymski studied and painted the majority of his works. The perfect execution ranks with the exactitude characteristic almost exclusively of Wilhelm Leibl, the most prominent Munich realist.
The third reason is that Gierymski was an excellent colourist, this fact is reflected in his other grand work, W Altanie (Under the Gazebo), however, he rarely displayed that set of his skills in his naturalist paintings. This is a different quality making Żydówka z Pomarańczami an outstanding work, which perfectly introduces the contrast between the vibrant shades and the scale of beiges, browns, and greys of the impoverished Jewess’ clothes.
The fourth reason is the fact, that the Żydówka z Pomarańczami is a painting which best encapsulates the aspirations and questions put forward mainly in the literature by young Warsaw naturalists. Their informal body was Wędrowiec (The Wanderer) – at that time, Gierymski was involved with the periodical, though it would be fairer to say that he honoured it with his writings.
The members of Wędrowiec, Antoni Sygietyński, Adolf Dygasiński, and a young Stanisław Witkiewicz, dreamt of art faithfully depicting reality, show its grievous and shameful problems, an art which would illustrate mankind’s tragedy and heroism almost to the point of cruelty while remaining noble. The incredible face of the Jewess shows everything the Warsaw naturalists strove to describe, but despite numerous attempts never succeeded.
Żydówka z Pomarańczami is also one of the most important judaicas in the history of Polish painting, alongside Aleksander Gierymski’s other paintings like the various versions of Święto Trąbek (The Feast of Trumpets) and Powiśle (The Powiśle District in Warsaw). Within this category, it is a type of two literary genres: physiology and a picture which were supposed to concisely sketch a segment of reality as faithfully as possible, most often while infiltrating the nooks and crannies of big city life. These may have been the expectations of Gierymski’s friends from Wędrowiec, who cherished this type of poetics, which is characteristic of mid-19th-century literature.
Warsaw’s Jews, an incredible and scenic element of the urban folklore, as well as a serious social issue, often became the main characters of this type of sketch. Their authors were for example Wędrowiec’s contributor, Adolf Dygasiński, whose Nowe Tajemnice Warszawy (Warsaw’s New Secrets) contain a shocking description of a pogrom in a Jewish quarter, or Bolesław Prus, whose Kroniki Tygodniowe (Weekly Chronicles) stem directly from physiology and picture, or Klemens Junosza, who was a specialist in Jewish-themed works. Gierymski was perfectly consistent with the trend, creating some of the most faithful and touching representations of the life of Warsaw’s Jews, representations which were second to none as far as painting is concerned.
Since 1929, the author’s replica of the painting. known as Żydówka z Cytrynami (Jewess with Lemons), has been property of The Silesian Museum in Katowice. The painting used to be owned by a famous collector, Ignacy Korwin Milewski, who bought it from the painter himself the year it was painted (1881) and then resold it in 1924 to Abe Gutenajer’s antique shop in Warsaw, five years before the painting reached the museum in Katowice.
Originally written in Polish by Konrad Niciński, Mar 2011, translated by AP, 23 Nov 2017
Aleksander Gierymski
Żydówka z Pomarańczami
1881
oil on canvas
courtesy of the National Museum in Warsaw