Le marronnier seculaire

The print shows a fragment of a garden belonging to the palace and park complex in Puławy. Barbara Czernof née Groten was the author of the watercolour on which the lithograph was based. In the 1850s, she created many works showing the former Czartoryski palace and views of the surrounding localities. Czernof was a drawing teacher at the Alexandrian Institute for the Education of Ladies, which functioned in the estate confiscated by the Russians after 1831. Twenty-four of the painter's works were collected in Armand Théophile Cassagne's lithographic album Album des vues de l'Institut Alexandra du jardin et des environs de Novo Alexandra (Pulawy), published in Paris in 1858. They present a type of academic landschaft with staffage, sentimental in expression and semi-amateurish in technique.

The main motif of several compositions are old trees, stately and picturesque oaks, poplars, linden. Trees played a special role in Izabela Czartoryska's née Flemming concept of the park. Some specimens, rich in mythical, cultural and historical content, formed a type of compositional skeleton, marking important points in the natural and landscape story. In the English garden of Duchess Izabela there were also various buildings, including the first Polish museums - the Temple of Sybil and the Gothic House, as well as smaller architecture in the form of, for example, ruins, bridges, fountains, caves. Its establishment was one of the most outstanding park projects in Europe at that time.

The card Le marronnier séculaire depicts a section of the park planted with trees in the Lower Garden near the Chinese House, situated by the Vistula River. Almost the entire field of the representation is occupied by a large crown of an old oak. A wide avenue runs next to it, with several people strolling along it. A mother or bona with two children has stopped under the tree; an elegant couple has passed by. To the left, a sweeping view of the river and the opposite bank opens up. In the distance there are gentle hills with a low horizon line, with a huge expanse of sky covered with light clouds. In the gaps between the greenery, small fragments of a former teahouse and a small house appear, located on the right on the far hill.