Peasant Coffin

A peasant husband and wife sit outside their cottage, and beside them stands a small coffin, the size made for a child. Aleksander Gierymski drew his first studies for this around 1893 while staying near Kraków, in the village of Bronowice that painters and poets of the day liked to treat as an image of authentic Polish country life. Gierymski went the other way from that idyll. There is no drama and no sermon, only two people worn quiet by a loss that was ordinary in a village where children often died young. He was a restless perfectionist who reworked pictures for years and destroyed the ones that failed him. This was the last figure composition he ever finished. After it he painted only landscapes and city views.