Grand pianos are suspended from hot-air balloons over a European cityscape in this fanciful watercolor painting by Tytus Brzozowski. That city is a surreal intermingling of present and past Warsaw, the very same city where the composer Chopin lived and studied the piano for the first half of his life, ultimately moving away to Paris until his death at the age of 39. After the November Uprising of 1830-31 was crushed by Russian forces, "Warsaw [was] little more than a military garrison, its university closed."

Chopin was never to return.