Landscape study in Bohdanów

Bohdanów was the Ruszczyc family estate near Vilnius (then in the Russian-controlled Pale of Settlement), and the landscape studies made there were among the most personal and sustained of his early career. The estate's flat agricultural fields, their wide skies, and the Lithuanian forest on the horizon provided him with the specific landscape vocabulary that would define his mature work. A landscape study made on one's home property carried for Polish artists of this period not merely aesthetic but national significance — to depict the Polish-Lithuanian landscape was to assert its continuing cultural identity under Russian occupation. The National Museum in Warsaw holds this among its Ruszczyc holdings.

The landscape study is relatively unelaborated compositionally, with the horizon placed high or low and the sky given expansive treatment that reflects Ruszczyc's interest in the particular drama of northern light. His handling is direct and sketchy in the best plein-air tradition.