Kraków in the morning.

Kraków in the Morning, painted in 1897 and in the National Museum in Warsaw, depicts the historic capital of Polish culture at a moment of particular significance — Kraków under Austro-Hungarian rule was a centre of Polish national identity, culture, and memory at a time when Poland as a state did not exist. Fałat, as Director of the Kraków School of Fine Arts from 1895, was deeply embedded in this cultural life. A morning view of the city — with its distinctive skyline of church towers, the Royal Cathedral on Wawel Hill, and the Market Square — is simultaneously a topographic record and a statement of cultural attachment to the city's historic significance. The cool morning light, with mist and the particular quality of early-day illumination, gave Fałat material for his characteristic atmospheric handling.

Morning light and atmospheric haze are challenges that suit Fałat's fluid, atmospheric oil technique. The cityscape requires architectural accuracy in the principal monuments while allowing looser handling in the middle-distance buildings and foreground. A cool, silvery palette appropriate to early morning light distinguishes this from midday or evening views of the same subject.