The king in hiding and the canvas that vanished
Wojciech Gerson painted a legend about a king eluding pursuit. The large canvas went missing from the artist’s family during the occupation.
In Gerson’s painting, a figure in the rocks recalls the legend of the future King Władysław I Łokietek. In the story, a spider spins a web over a cave entrance, persuading the men hunting him that nobody has gone inside. Gerson painted this scene in 1863, decades before the landscape acquired a second association with disappearance.
The oil on canvas measures 230 by 173 centimetres. At the time of its loss it belonged to Gerson’s daughters, Jadwiga Bobińska and Maria Gerson-Dąbrowska. Those names and the precise dimensions help identify a specific family-owned painting among Gerson’s historical subjects.
The Muzeum Utracone catalogue dates the loss to 1940–44, during the German occupation. The listing leaves the precise date and route unresolved. The archival image preserves the canvas’s composition and gives researchers a point of comparison if a related photograph or inventory entry emerges.
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