Jewess with Oranges

Among the few paintings the Polish painter Aleksander Gierymski genuinely admired in his own oeuvre, Jewess with Oranges stands out. Despite his tendency to be highly critical of his work, he expressed rare satisfaction in a letter to his friend, Prosper Dziekoński:

"Whereas the Jewess… may have been my best painting (…), devilishly vivid and colourful. I might be exaggerating—but anyway, if I am ever to return to serious painting, I will be left with large and mid-size figures—no more landscapes for me."

The painting astonishes with its striking realism. The woman’s face is rendered with poignant detail, reflecting exhaustion, resignation, and the burden of poverty. Gierymski rarely ventured into portraiture, making Jewess with Oranges an exceptional work among his cityscapes of the time, where figures often played a secondary role. His ability to capture the model’s raw emotions is particularly striking. At the time, he himself struggled with financial hardship and felt misunderstood in his homeland. Warsaw’s artistic circles criticized him for depicting mundane subjects instead of drawing inspiration from history.

The turbulent wartime history of Jewess with Oranges is impossible to overlook. Acquired by the National Museum in Warsaw in 1928, the painting was hidden in a museum storeroom at the outbreak of World War II. During the Warsaw Uprising, museum director Stanisław Lorentz saw the storage chests containing the artwork, but by the time he returned to the ruined city in January 1945, the painting had vanished, along with half a million masterpieces looted during the war from Poland. Thought to be lost forever, it unexpectedly resurfaced in 2010 at an auction house in Buxtehude, near Hamburg. Identified through prewar photographs from the NMW collection, it was recovered thanks to the efforts of Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Following an extensive conservation process, Jewess with Oranges was reinstated in the National Museum in Warsaw, where it remains a highlight of the Gallery of 19th-Century Art.