Objects

It was in in 1897 that Wojciech Weiss went to Paris for the first time. During his stay, he visited the Louvre, the Luxembourg Museum, and Versailles. He returned to the banks of the Seine in autumn 1899 and stayed in the French capital until May of the following year. Paris made a great impression on him, years later he reminisced: “Huge Paris – a worldly metropolis – and me, an emigrant in a small studio. […] Paris is seething in me. Thousands of all kinds of races, passions, and types. […] The Louvre, salons of Paris. The year 1899.” (Szkicownik Wojciecha Weissa, selected and edited by Aneri Irena Weissowa and Stanisław Weiss, Kraków 1976, p. 26).

Among a thousand races and types, Weiss’s attention was drawn to a group of men in black garments reaching the ground. He would see similar people both in his homeland in Bukovina (Romania) and when studying in Lviv and Kraków. In the French capital, this group of Orthodox Jews looked exotic, like a black spot against the colourful background of Paris. Conversely, the women whom he sketched in ink on the back of the sheet were every inch Parisian. The outlines of their slender silhouettes, wide skirts, and elegant hats, drawn with a restless black line, fill the entire surface of the sheet.