Country Children Collecting Brushwood

Two children carrying bundles of wood on their backs painstakingly make their way home. Colored dabs of paint are arranged to represent clothes, shoes, and sticks. The forest behind them is almost entirely dissolved into a colored shadow, save for a detailed portion of a tree trunk which emerges out of the top right. The children act wistfully lost. As in his other late works, Romako has given it an eerie atmosphere. Sketched in rapid, targeted strokes, and accentuated by bright accents of light, the two figures seem thin and fragile. In this illustration of children Romako revealed a high degree of accuracy that was rich in contrast, which somehow also possesses a peculiar, inherent volatility. Romako knew how to render psychologizing accentuations that worked to imbue ordinary scenery with deeper meaning.