Leon Wyczółkowski, Digging up Beets

Dated 1903, this work was executed in pastels on cardboard. The painting depicts people working in a field harvesting beets. The scene shows a section of a field with three figures, they are two women and a man, facing backwards. Other peasants and animals can be seen in the background. The whole work is presented in the harsh autumn sun, which gives a softness to the outlines. The rays give the clothes of the harvest workers a hue of red, yellow, orange and blue. The motif of digging up beets was repeated by Wyczółkowski many times, in various techniques and formats. During his stay in Ukraine between 1890 and 1912, he devoted several dozen works to it. There are two versions of Digging up Beets in the Bydgoszcz museum's collection. They are very similar to each other, differing in size and details of composition. Wyczółkowski was fascinated by the Ukrainian landscape and painted it at sunrise and sunset.