Sketch to "The Poisoned Well”

Sketch to 'The Poisoned Well' (1903), at the National Museum in Kraków, is a preparatory study for a larger allegorical canvas in which a poisoned well served as a central symbol. Poisoned water sources carry obvious allegorical weight: the corruption of something essential to life, the contamination of what should sustain community. In the political vocabulary of occupied Poland, a poisoned well could stand for the corruption of national culture by foreign influence. That Malczewski made formal studies for such a work suggests the importance he attached to the underlying allegory.

As a preparatory sketch, this work reveals Malczewski's compositional process more directly than his finished canvases. Forms are suggested rather than resolved, spatial relationships tested, and figural positions adjusted, giving the viewer unusual access to the artist's working method as he develops a major symbolic theme.