Portrait of the artist's four children

By 1879 Jan Matejko was the man Poles turned to for their history. On his big canvases he refought the battles and reckonings of a country that, on the map of the day, no longer existed, partitioned among its neighbours. That same year he finished a scene of the failed 1863 uprising. Then he painted this, and the subject is simply his own children. Four of them fill the room of the family's country house at Krzeslawice, near Krakow, among tapestries and heavy furniture, one of the girls busy with a small bird. The little bag hanging at his daughter Helena's side is a real object. It is still kept at the Matejko house in Krakow, and Helena herself grew up to be a painter.