Peasants waiting for payment 1884

Jacek Malczewski painted 'Peasants waiting for payment' in watercolor, although we don't know when. What does it mean to represent rural workers and their relationship with the economy? Malczewski sets up a scene that is seemingly simple. A group of peasants are waiting, probably after a day's work, to be paid. A man sits at a table, counting and distributing wages. The scene contains social and cultural codes: the dress and tools of agricultural laborers, and their proximity to what appears to be a farm building. We can assume it was painted in Poland given that Malczewski lived and worked there. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Poland was undergoing rapid modernization and industrialization which in turn affected the economic and social conditions of rural peasants. Malczewski's painting appears to respond to these changes by representing a particular type of encounter between workers and landowners. As art historians, it is our job to ask what the painting is trying to tell us about that moment in time.