From Lithuanian peasants’ life

The painting depicts an everyday scene from peasants’ life. A family of peasants is sitting on the ground in the yard of their farm, the father is brushing his son’s hair, and the child, in an easily recognizable motion, is crushing lice falling out of his hair. The whole family is wearing light white linen clothes with black sashes tied around their waists. The woman and one of the girls have scarves around their heads, while the youngest daughter is wearing a straw hat. Watching the scene before him is the foreman, standing in the background of the painting, but easily spotted by a viewer nevertheless, as he is depicted wearing a bright blue župan. The landscape is not very detailed - we see the corner of a wooden, straw-roofed farmhouse, a fragment of a big tree growing nearby and some shrubbery painted in the opposite corner of the picture. All these elements are essentially just the background that helps construct the composition and bring the people into focus. The painter devoted all his attention to conveying the scene itself; carefully painting the faces, depicting the type of the clothing relatively accurately, though not pedantically. Most likely, a specific event was captured in the painting, a scene from the time when the hygiene of estate’s peasants was taken into consideration. However, this also reflects the general tendencies of the Enlightenment: greater attention devoted to the peasantry, concern over the quality of their everyday life.The nature of the painting technique, the style of the picture, even the character prototypes and the face modelling technique are all characteristic of the painting style of Franciszek Smuglewicz (Text author dr. Rūta Janonienė).