Bustards

As his wife recalled, Chełmoński studied the motif of bustards feeding in a meadow, “in winter corn covered with dew,” from nature in the area of Chaville near Versailles, where the family spent their holidays in the late summer of 1886. On 29 December 1886, in a letter to his mother, Chełmoński wrote about sending the fresh�ly completed canvas Bustards to Warsaw for a painting competition organized by TZSP at the turn of 1886 . However, the painting was poorly received by Warsaw critics.