Boy Carrying a Shaft is an 1895 painting by Polish artist Aleksander Gierymski. It is located in the National Museum in Wroclaw, Poland.
Analysis of Boy Carrying a Shaft
Aleksander Gierymski is seen as both a Realist and an Impressionist painter and in Boy Carrying a Shaft seems to straddle the boundaries between both. The boy is realistically drawn and painted with natural colors in the costume and face which exhibits a sternness that perhaps indicates a social challenge.
Gierymski did not shy from painting humble subject matter. There is also an impressionistic taste – in the shaft and the landscape, the painter shows a light falling of various colors, which tells us of the painter’s concern with perception and a sense of the magic in the humble.