Wojciech Gerson (1831 Warsaw - 1901 there), Rural Family

watercolor, gouache, white cardboard, 18 × 22 cm
Signed and dated l. d.: Wojciech Gerson 1854
on the back a confirmation of authenticity issued by Dr. Stanisław Dąbrowski dated 26.03.1963.
The watercolor dates from Gerson's early creative period and is part of the iconographic material documenting the folk clothing of the Polish landed gentry. The artist, as a representative of realism in art, recorded observations directly from nature during his "walking tours" around the country, the beginning of which dates back to 1849.The works prepared as part of the series were published in 1855. in the form of chromolithographs in the album Costumes Polonais: dessines d'apres nature par Gerson, Lithographies par E. Desmaisons, which included 14 color plates depicting clothing from the areas of Suwałki, Tykocin, Płock, Augustów, Kujawy, Podlasie, Mazury (2 plates), Galicia, among others.
Interest in costuming and the fashion for specific genre subjects in painting and graphics, such as figures of artisans, peddlers, bribers, peasants - dated from the 17th century as a pan-European current in art, with varying intensity and manifestations, until the mid-19th century. In the nineteenth century, there were many original and talented artists in Poland who were involved in drawing folk clothes, as well as many reenactors, popularizing or duplicating the types of costumes created by others. This special interest in nineteenth-century costume and its domestic exoticism, discovering and tracing native threads, was the result of the specific situation of Poland, torn by three partitions, and the necessity, realized by enlightened people, to collect domestic memorabilia, especially those that dealt with the issue of rural folk, which had been neglected from the research side. A. Jacher-Tyszkowa, Polish graphics of the 19th century as a source for the study of costume, "Polish Folk Art" 1975 No. 4, p. 210.