Beetroot digging II.

Beetroot Digging II, painted in 1911, is one of a pair of canvases in which Wyczółkowski returned to the agricultural labour subjects that had defined his reputation in the 1890s, now filtered through two additional decades of stylistic evolution. By 1911, his palette had become more vivid and his handling more decorative, influenced by Art Nouveau and the Symbolist colorism circulating in Kraków's Young Poland movement. The subject of root crop harvesting — stooped figures extracting vegetables from soil — continued a line of imagery reaching back through his earlier Ukrainian farm scenes to Millet's French precedents. The return to this subject in a later style demonstrates his commitment to working-class rural subjects as the core of a distinctively Polish visual identity.

The 1911 canvas likely shows a more heightened palette and broader, more decorative brushwork than his 1890s canvases of the same subject, reflecting the influence of Young Poland aesthetics on his later style. Figures are rendered with monumental presence against the open field.