The fascination with the exotic nature of the Eastern Carpathians and the culture of the Hutsul people at the turn of the 20th century became an important impulse for Polish artists, who found there both a source of inspiration and a space for artistic exploration. In the works of such painters as Kazimierz Sichulski, Fryderyk Pautsch or Władysław Jarocki, the tradition and everyday life of mountain communities were combined with innovative forms of expression, creating unique works that went beyond the simple documentation of folklore.

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the milieu of the Galician intelligentsia was overtaken by peasantomania, stemming as much from an empathetic need to get to know hitherto unseen social groups as from a superficial fashion for treating folklore quite stereotypically. Cracovian painters, writers and musicians lost themselves in inspiration with the material and spiritual culture of the villages of Lesser Poland. Also the fascination with the Eastern Carpathian lands and the Hutsul people inhabiting them, with their colourful costumes and unique customs, affected a wide range of Polish artists. Among them were the famous "Monachians" such as Teodor Axentowicz, Wacław Szymanowski or Stanisław Dębicki. But the mythologisation of this ethnic group manifested itself most strongly in the works of three painters associated with Lviv, who for this reason even earned the nickname "Hutsuls": Władysław Jarocki (1879-1965), Fryderyk Pautsch (1877-1950) and Kazimierz Sichulski (1879-1942), the most famous among them. The Hutsul period in their work began in the winter of late 1904 and early 1905, when all three went on an open-air trip to Tatarovo on the Prut River. This trip became a turning point - from then on, Hutsuls and Hutsul women appeared in their paintings more and more often, depicted against the background of familiar, picturesque Carpathian landscapes. Imbued with the local folklore, which seemed completely exotic to the urban viewer, the protagonists of the canvases delighted critics and art lovers, assuring the three painters almost immediate success. As Władysław Kozicki, the author of the first monograph on Sichulski, wrote, the figures gave the impression of being 'impetuous, poetic in their wildness and romantic in their strong primitiveness'.

Sichulski's Hutsul output falls into two rather separate streams. On the one hand, there are scenes depicting individually treated figures in portraits or multi-character genre scenes inspired by rural life. With the attention of a sensitive documentalist, the artist captures the contrasts between the ornate folk costumes rendered with ethnographic precision and painterly bravura and the physiognomies marked by the hardships of life, the wrinkled faces of old highlanders or the poverty-stricken faces of destitute orphans. There is not only the admiration of an observer enchanted by superficial glamour, but also deep sympathy and understanding for the realities of their hard lives.

On the other hand, however, Sichulski also uses the Hutsul costume in metaphysical compositions of a more universal nature. In the first two decades of the 20th century, he created monumental religious works using folk motifs, gradually moving away from realism towards synthetic decorativeness. Most of these were designs for (mostly unfortunately unrealized) stained glass windows, wall polychromes and mosaics. A characteristic feature of his designs for monumental decorative works was the introduction of stylistics inspired by the Viennese Art Nouveau (plane, rhythmic, dynamic contour lines, brightness of colour, further emphasised by the use of gold) and the interpretation of traditional Christian themes in a modern philosophical and metaphysical approach, emphasising the links between what is spiritual and temporal reality. He realised the frequently recurring Marian motif using the Hutsul costume, which he knew very well. He first included the Hutsul Bogurodzica in the triptych 'Madonna with Angels' from 1909, which was presented a few years later at the International Art Exhibition in Rome, where it was purchased by the Austrian Ministry of Education for the Austrian Gallery in Vienna. A slightly later design for the mosaic 'Adoration of the Three Kings' was acquired for the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw in 1927. He also used similar solutions in the cartons for St Elizabeth's Church in Lviv, commissioned by Archbishop Józef Bilczewski, which were very favourably received at the General Exhibition of Polish Art in 1910 and at the monographic exhibition held a year later in Lviv.

The collection of the Lviv National Art Gallery still contains a vinyl variant of the 'Hutsul Bogurodzica', dated 1914, executed in tempera on paper pasted onto canvas. The juxtaposition of the synthetically geometrised figures of the Madonna and Child and the two adoring angels with a completely flat gold background using a mosaic motif creates a strong ornamental decorative effect. All the figures are dressed in typical folk costumes - embroidered soročky, richly embroidered keptaras, i.e. short sleeveless jackets made of sheepskin, wide leather belts, beaded jewellery characteristic of the Hutsul Region, or a type of horse shoes called postoly. The sacred intermingles with the profane, biblical history with everyday experience. At European exhibitions, Sichulski's Hutsul Madonnas invariably met with great acclaim, but among the locals they sometimes provoked indignation and accusations expressed in the press about the introduction of Ruthenian motifs and 'common' types into religious scenes. Perhaps because of this type of controversy, the artist's visions remained for the most part only in the realm of projects, without ever seeing final realisation.