Warsaw Street Types

'Z dawnej i niedawnej Warszawy" : album typów ulicznych : 20 autolitografji' (approx: The Recent and Former Warsaw: An Album of Street Types: 20 lithographs) from the Polish Digital Library (1926).

Józef Rapacki (1871-1929) trained as an artist in Warsaw, Cracow and Munich. He travelled to Italy on many occasions and was known as a landscape artist early in his career, but later in life he was more inclined towards illustration and graphic art works.

I'm not sure I could correctly identify all of the trades depicted among this suite of sometimes dubious-looking urban characters. There's certainly no attempt to embellish the portraits: these are not romantic sketches; although the subjects are generally displayed with a proud countenance. The pictures are somewhat reminiscent of the urchins and street people found in Mayhew's study of the London poor from the 1860s.