Polish Hamlet. Portrait of Aleksander Wielopolski

In 1903 Poland did not exist on any map. It had been carved up between Russia, Prussia and Austria for more than a hundred years, and its artists carried the question of the nation's future like a private wound. Jacek Malczewski turns that question into a portrait. The young man is Aleksander Wielopolski, an amateur painter, and Malczewski gives him an ammunition belt whose pouches hold tubes of paint instead of cartridges. He stands between two women who are both Poland. Behind one shoulder an old woman sits shackled, wearing a crown of twine, the country of the past. Behind the other a young woman tears herself free of her chains. The man just stands there pulling petals from a daisy, unable to choose, which is why Malczewski called him a Polish Hamlet.