Mirror of the past
December 17th
When I saw this painting in my local museum for the first time, I stopped in my tracks and just stood there staring at it for a long while. I couldn’t put my finger on it why did this painting from the beginning of the XX century, of a peasant woman from a naturalist/symbolist Polish painter grab my attention so much. I wanted to learn more about this painting and assumed that I will easily find information online. To my surprise — that wasn’t the case. I did search on different search engines, looking by the title and painter’s name and genre — no luck. This painting simply doesn’t virtually exist outside my local museum. I went back to the museum just to take this photo.
The woman from this painting looked familiar somehow, but the clue came only after a few weeks — I was walking by a bus stop where I live when I saw a woman with an uncanny resemblance to the woman from this painting. Uncanny is probably a wrong word here — she looked exactly like the woman from the painting. Her whole facial structure from the forehead to chin, with narrow eyes, is the same in every way as the woman from the painting. Only then I realised that I have actually seen that woman from the bus stop many times before and that’s why that painting was so eye-catching for me.
That woman from the bus stop, that modern doppelganger of the woman from the painting is about 25 years old, very thin and she hangs out with the local drunks and dregs of society. She seems always tired and like she has already given up on any hope and achieving anything in life. I guess that is another similarity to the painting — a woman from the peasant family at the beginning of the XX century couldn’t have much hope for life and the future. And that even not knowing that two world wars will still be coming in 10–30 years.
That mirror image is quite striking and interesting and somewhat bothersome to me. I don’t know yet why.
