Lumberjacks 1938

Jozef Hanula made this painting, Lumberjacks, around 1939, and I love how he’s used these muted browns and greens, giving it an earthy feel, like the colours are rising up from the soil. The paint isn’t too thick, more like he’s layering thin washes to build up the scene, a real sense of process. Look at the lumberjack on the right. See how his face is kind of hidden, in shadow, but you can still feel the weight of the log in his shoulders? It’s like Hanula is showing us not just the physical labor, but the emotional weight of it too. The strokes are loose and free, but they come together to make something really solid. It makes me think a bit of Courbet. Both artists share that honesty about the everyday, about the hard work that goes into making the world. This isn’t just a painting of lumberjacks, it’s a painting about work, about the kind of human effort that shapes the land. The scene is presented to us as a landscape, but it is also a portrait of a shared struggle.