Ramallah near Jerusalem. From the journey to Palestine

Ramallah's position in the Judean highlands northwest of Jerusalem made it a natural subject for Ciągliński during his 1901 stay in the region. This painting appears to complement his earlier view of Ramallah, approaching the town from a different vantage or at a different time and affirming his sustained interest in Palestinian townscape as documentary subject. The two Ramallah paintings together suggest an almost journalistic attention to a specific place, unusual within the more sweeping survey approach typical of nineteenth-century Orientalist travel painting. Both works now serve as important visual records of the town's late Ottoman built fabric before subsequent development.

Whitewashed and stone-built houses step down a hillside in warm afternoon light, rendered with the abbreviated Post-Impressionist touch Ciągliński applies throughout the series. Shadow passages of cool violet-blue modulate the dominant warm tones, with the sky given a luminous, thinly applied treatment conveying the clarity of highland air.