Tempestade

Chelmonski spent the 1870s and 1880s making his name in Paris, then came home to Poland for good, and he painted this in 1896 out of long watching of open country. It is all one gust of wind. A sudden storm has caught a group of children minding cattle on the steppe, and everything leans one way. In front a boy grips the hat half torn from his head and crosses himself with his free hand. Another child pulls his head down into his shoulders. The cows have bolted with their tails up, a girl running after them. Low thistles flatten and dust hangs in the air. There is no story here beyond the weather itself. The Krakow museum bought the picture two years later, the first work by Chelmonski to enter the collection.