Villa Borghese in Rome

In the last years of his life, Aleksander Gierymski (1850-1901) created many urban landscapes. These were views of historic buildings and squares in Munich, Paris, Rome, and other European cities. In his painting, Gierymski maintained the realism of the presentation, care for detail, and thorough finishing of the work. In his work, he made use of sensitivity to colour, showing the diverse, short-lived effects of nature, light, and shades of vegetation. In an effort to display subtle differences of light and shadow, Gierymski sometimes painted the same motif many times in different frames. The collections of the National Museum in Krakow include two views of a garden park at the Roman villa of the Borghese family. In one of them, the afternoon sun bleaches the sky and creates falling shadows on the pathways and lawns. The second painting shows the moment after sunset on a sultry day.