Pod Bożą Męką [Under God’s Suffering] in Kazimierz

Wojciech Gerson (1831-1901) spent his professional life in Warsaw, where he carried out extensive scientific, cultural and pedagogical activities. He began studying architecture and painting at the School of Fine Arts there. In 1867, he opened a private studio for students, and from 1871, he managed the famous Drawing Class, in which several generations of artists received education. Gerson co-founded the so-called Marcin Olszyński group, known as the first Warsaw bohemia, which gathered students of the School of Fine Arts. The artists from the circle of Olszyński, a patron of the arts and photographer, were guided by patriotic ideas of renewing Polish painting, which they realised during their artistic activities while travelling around the country and wandering in Warsaw. During the so-called waterborne journeys, Gerson documented the journey in dozens of sketches in pencil or watercolour. He travelled to the Lublin region twice; this view of one of the most beautiful granaries in Kazimierz comes from the second journey he made in 1853 in the company of M. Olszyński, J. Cegliński and J. Majewski. It led from Warsaw through Przytoczno and Łysobyki to Lubartów, Zawieprzyce and Lublin, and then to Puławy, Bochotnica, Kazimierz and Janowiec. Gerson was one of the first artists who were attracted to Kazimierz Dolny on the Vistula River by the beauty of the local open air and the variety of picturesque motifs. He returned to his memories of the town years later, when he published a series of articles devoted to Powiśle in "Tygodnik Powszechny" (1885). He wrote in them, among other things, about the local granaries: "The first herald of the town will be an old granary without a roof, then another one in complete ruin, another one transformed into a new one, only its strong construction betrays its antiquity, and there are many of them and they stretch for a long time over the bank before you reach the middle of the town by a paved road, because people used to build on the bank for the mountains and for the same reason that granaries are most convenient on the bank. Most of them are empty now for the important reason that unfriendly fate first turned the grain trade to a different route, and then the capricious river turned back the riverbed that once flowed under the town itself, and a wide sandy cape was formed, cut off only by a small stream, which flows into the Vistula from a ravine here through the town".