Dressed-up Peasant Woman
Author: Sleńdziński Wincenty Leopold, 1837 - 1909
Created: around 1885.
Material / technique: oil on canvas.
Dimensions: 52x34.5 cm.
Signature: VS 85 (in the center-left side of the painting).
<...> An important part of Slendzinski's artistic oeuvre consists of images of anonymous individuals, forming a gallery of social portraits. These are the faces of ordinary poor urban and rural inhabitants who did not ask to be painted. The painter probably paid them himself for posing. Sensitive from a young age, and having experienced deprivation himself, he was able to spot the more expressive faces in the crowd of the poor and capture their characters on canvas, thus expressing compassion and solidarity. His 1885 painting "A Peasant Woman Dressed Up", which travelled from one private collection of paintings to another, was one of the first such portraits to be painted after his return to Lithuania. It shows a rather well-to-do girl from the countryside, her neck adorned with several rows of different beads and her ears with earrings. The shifty look in her eyes, her flushed face and her smile, as if she were being tamed, convey the proud, unwavering character of a confident girl. <...>
Reference: Jolanta Širkaitė, "Through the Eyes of the Soul. The Life and Work of Vincentas Slendzinskis (1838-1909)", Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, Vilnius, 2024, P. 113-114.
Exhibitions: “More Than Just Beauty: The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection”, 12 October – 11 November 2012, National Gallery of Art; Vilnius Exhibition of the Fine Arts Collection of Edmundas Armoška "Outcrops of Lithuanian Art 16th–21th Centuries" 2008 July 3 - August 31, Lithuanian Art Museum, Vilnius.
Published: "More Than Just Beauty. The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection." Compiled by G. Jankevičiūtė. Vilnius, LAWIN, 2012, Kat. No. 186; "Outcrops of Lithuanian Art 16th–21th Centuries", Vilnius Exhibition of the Fine Arts Collection of Edmundas Armoška, Vilnius: Lithuanian Art Museum, 2008 Kat. No. II, 59, P. 103; "RES PUBLICA" The art collection of the law firm Ellex Valiunas. Compiler R. Jononienė. Vilnius, 2018, Cat. No. 85, P. 229; Jolanta Širkaitė, "Through the Eyes of the Soul. The Life and Work of Vincentas Slendzinskis (1838-1909)", Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, Vilnius, 2024, P. 113-114, No. 92
Photograph: display in the exhibition “More Than Just Beauty: The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection”, 12 October – 11 November 2012, National Gallery of Art.