oil, cardboard, size 70 x 100 cm, signed p.d. "WWodzinowski"
Wincenty Wodzinowski (1866 - 1940) was a student of Gerson at the Warsaw Drawing Class, and later of Jan Matejko and Włodzimierz Łuszczkiewicz at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. He also supplemented his painting studies at the Munich Academy. Connected to Krakow throughout his artistic life, he remained faithful to the main theme in his work - a village near Krakow with its inhabitants and customs. He was a popular painter of folklore, and his portraits, landscapes and genre scenes of village life were extremely popular. He repeated his compositions many times, sometimes slightly changing them to meet the demand of buyers.
The work uses the artist's favorite rural theme - it's a veristic genre scene, not devoid of anecdotes, where two women in Krakow folk costumes convey a message to each other, presumably in discretion. The young man who accompanies them listens to this village gossip unwillingly. The atmosphere of the event is brilliantly rendered and, as usual in Wodzinowski's work, the characteristic character types in lightly and freely painted colorful clothes. The landscape is barely present, but complements the performance.
