Poland has recovered a treasured painting, stolen by Germany during World War II. I had posted Gierymski’s similar painting as my Art-for-the-Day on March 22nd.

From the Guardian: Polish painting returned to Warsaw after 67 years on missing list: Aleksander Gierymski’s Jewish Woman Selling Oranges retrieved after turning up at Hamburg auction house

A valuable 19th century Polish painting missing since the second world war has been returned to Poland after being removed from auction in Germany.

Aleksander Gierymski’s Jewish Woman Selling Oranges was unveiled in Poland on Wednesday by culture minister Bogdan Zdrojewski, who said the return came after many months of negotiations with lawyers representing a German who had possessed it for more than 30 years.

“During those long months, my main thought was to have this picture returned to Poland,” Zdrojewski said.

The work – sometimes referred to as the Orange Vendor – dates from 1880-1881 and is one of several Gierymski works showing Jewish life in poor parts of Warsaw.

The oil on canvas shows an old woman in a cap and with a thick shawl over her shoulders knitting as she holds two baskets, one filled with oranges. She has shrunken cheeks that give her an impoverished look, and is set against a foggy Warsaw skyline.

It has been returned to its original home in the National Museum in Warsaw, where it will undergo many months of renovation.

Museum director Agnieszka Morawinska described it as a “priceless masterpiece” that pleased the painter, rarely content with his own work.

Its return is a “very special day and a true gift for the museum”, she said.

The picture went missing from the museum in 1944, five years into Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland.

It was among a huge numbers of cultural artefacts stolen by German and Soviet forces during their joint wartime occupation of Poland. The country’s government is making efforts to find and bring the works of art back.

The painting resurfaced last November among items offered for sale at a small auction house near Hamburg.

Poland’s chief insurer, PZU SA, paid an undisclosed sum in compensation to the German who had acquired the painting.

Of note, Gierymski painted two similar works: “Żydówka z cytrynami” and “Żydówka z pomarańczami” literally “Jewess with Lemons” and “Jewess with Oranges.”

Gazetta Wyborcza notes in Pomarańczarka w areszcie from November 2010, that Gierymski’s “Jewish woman with oranges” was looted from the National Museum in Warsaw during the war. His other, similar work, “Jewess with Lemons” is on display at the Upper Silesian Museum in Bytom. Both paintings have different details, but express the same emotions and situations: toil, the bitterness of existence, persistence in spite of lost illusions, a lonely, tragic, damaged figure pushed down but not broken, and ultimately beautiful.

An example of oranges and lemons together in today’s painting: “Pomarańcze i cytryny,” “Oranges and Lemons” by Edward Okuń.