A painting by the prominent 19th-century Polish artist Aleksander Gierymski which was looted by the Germans from the National Museum in Warsaw has been returned to Poland.

A Jewish woman selling oranges is thought to have gone missing in the final months of the war. The painting surfaced last November when it was put up for auction in Buxtehude, Germany, but was withdrawn from sale after an intervention by the Polish Ministry of Culture, the National Museum and the Warsaw Prosecutor. The negotiations with the German side on the return of the painting started in December.

The canvass was painted in 1880-1881 during Gierymski’s stay in Warsaw.

One of the artist’s numerous genre scenes presenting the life of Jewish inhabitants of the city’s poor districts, it was included in the collection of the National Museum in 1928.

Aleksander Gierymski studied painting at the Fine Arts Academy in Munich. He is considered one of the forerunners of Polish Impressionism and spent many years in Rome, where he died in 1901, at the age of 51.

His younger brother, Mieczysław, was a renowned watercolour painter. (mk)