The representation of women artists at Tate Britain carries particular significance. Exhibitions of Magdalena Abakanowicz and Mirosław Bałka at its sister institution, Tate Modern, have resonated throughout the contemporary art world. Few people know, however, that a painting by Stanisława de Karłowska, a Polish-born artist, forms part of Tate Britain’s collection display.

A Story of Gender, the Crowd and Everyday Urban Life

At first glance, “Swiss Cottage” (exhibited 1914) appears to be a fairly unassuming street scene. It shows part of a red bus, a fruit stall, a group of hat-wearing passers-by and soft, diffuse daylight. Beneath this apparently ordinary surface, however, lies a densely layered narrative of gender, society and everyday urban life. The Polish émigrée articulates it through what was then a distinctly modernist visual language. She depicts no sweeping panorama of the city, but a view from the pavement. The perspective even creates the impression that she herself is standing among the crowd. There is no grand narrative; the everyday takes its place in a juxtaposition of ordinary yet meaningful gestures.

On the left, a woman pushes an enormous black cart: an almost monolithic, weighty mass that seems to roll slowly on slender wheels. Opposite her, in the foreground, a girl in a yellow coat provides a striking contrast. She holds a hoop, a symbol of childhood play and freedom, but also of training and discipline. These two figures form opposing poles within the composition. At the same time, they draw attention away from the male figures at the centre, who, although present, seem devoid of energy. Their faces are impassive and their gazes fail to meet. The crowd resembles a swarm whose members follow parallel trajectories.

“Swiss Cottage” and Women’s Trajectories

Despite the compositional coherence, the city depicted here does not bring people together; it disperses them. This is where the perspective of the flâneuse, the female urban wanderer, comes into view. Rather than repeating the modernist model of the male observer, Karłowska reverses the direction of the gaze and gives women a voice. The cart and the hoop become instruments of presence. One symbolises the burden of care, the other movement and initiation into the rhythms of the city.

The women are not decorative background figures but navigators. They guide the viewer’s gaze through the painting. The girl pauses and looks straight ahead; this compels the viewer to meet her gaze. It is a subtle gesture of emancipation and, at the same time, a record of everyday experience, in which agency is expressed through the logistics of daily life rather than grand gestures. In this and other paintings, Karłowska’s female protagonists are adept at negotiating transitions. For them, the city is a space of continual miniature rituals: shopping, caring, playing and looking.

Colour in “Swiss Cottage”

In “Swiss Cottage”, the colour scheme is structured through contrasts that balance the composition like a chequerboard of colour. On the left, a broad yellow expanse of wall dominates; it is echoed in the yellow of the girl’s coat on the right. This yellow is muted, tending towards ochre. The symmetry binds the composition together. The purple street provides a neutral ground, against which the dark oval of the cart and the block of green and dark blue figures at the centre create visual weight. This weight contrasts with the burst of colour at the fruit stall. Colour here does not so much describe the world realistically as organise the scene into a rhythm of balances and tensions.

The painting reveals French influences. This is hardly surprising: Karłowska trained at the Académie Julian in Paris. Her training is evident in the flat areas of colour, assured draughtsmanship and acute awareness of the picture plane. Perhaps from the Nabis, a group of French artists active in the 1890s, she absorbed the primacy of colour over light. Her treatment of everyday life as a field of painterly experimentation also suggests an affinity with Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) and Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940). She may also have absorbed, at least indirectly and perhaps through her husband, Robert Bevan (1865–1925), ideas associated with Paul Gauguin (1848–1903): that colour conveys emotion and contour structures space. The influence of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) can likewise be seen in her construction of solid forms and use of architectural rhythms, which organise the figures within the urban space.

A Polish Artist in the London Art World

Who was the artist whose name remains familiar chiefly to scholars and art enthusiasts? Stanisława de Karłowska (1876–1952) was a Polish-born painter. She was born on her family’s estate at Szeliwy, also known as Wszeliwy, near Łowicz. She studied in Warsaw and Kraków before enrolling at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1896. The Académie was a leading private art school that admitted women. In 1897, she married the English painter Robert Bevan in Warsaw and subsequently settled in London.

Although closely associated with the Camden Town Group of British Post-Impressionists, she was ineligible for membership because she was a woman. Founded as a group of sixteen men, it did not admit women. Nevertheless, several women artists, including Karłowska, maintained close social and artistic ties with the group. In 1914, she was elected to The London Group, which had emerged from the Camden Town Group and other progressive artistic circles. Although her work was generally well received, Karłowska’s achievements were often overshadowed by those of her husband.

Although she spent most of her life in England, Karłowska maintained close ties with Poland. She and Bevan made several visits to her family estate at Szeliwy, also known as Wszeliwy, in Mazovia. There, Bevan painted landscapes inspired by the Polish countryside. They also stayed at Mydłów, near Sandomierz, where Karłowska produced several works depicting rural life and folk motifs.

As art historian Władysława Jaworska noted in the catalogue of a posthumous exhibition devoted to the couple, both supported Polish causes during the First World War. They maintained contacts within émigré circles and supported the cause of Polish independence. Their London home was sometimes known as “the Polish House”.

Stanisława de Karłowska: Between Polish Tradition and European Modernity

Although direct influences from Polish painting are difficult to identify in Karłowska’s work, the context in which her visual sensibility developed cannot be ignored. Polish art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may well have shaped her, particularly its folk traditions and the expressive use of colour associated with Kraków’s modernist circles. This may have contributed to her preference for saturated colour and the emotional tenor of her paintings. It was, of course, only one among many impulses. Any attempt to identify unequivocal sources in her work remains hazardous. Karłowska assimilated influences from French Post-Impressionism, English realism and family memory, transforming them into a visual language of her own.

She painted landscapes, urban scenes and still lifes, leaving an oeuvre of more than 200 works. Today, her paintings are held in numerous public collections, including Tate, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, Manchester Art Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and Southampton City Art Gallery, as well as in private collections. Stanisława de Karłowska died in London in 1952 and was buried in the Bevan family grave at Cuckfield, Sussex.

“Swiss Cottage”: Gender and the City

Why does Karłowska’s art remain relevant today? Above all, it articulates a female perspective within modernist art, while her paintings are also masterfully constructed. Flattened perspective, elongated figures and contrasting areas of colour create tension between realistic representation and visual sign. Together, these devices bring a new, avant-garde mode of seeing into British art of the period. In works such as “Swiss Cottage”, Karłowska depicts the city through the eyes of a woman who is not merely present “within the frame”, but who also looks, chooses and organises the pictorial space. She exposes the modernist myth of the street as an egalitarian space. The city she depicts makes women visible, yet also imposes conventions that govern their movement, emotions and social roles. Karłowska presents this without moralising. She observes, synthesises and distils gestures.

Karłowska’s work constitutes an early and sustained female voice in British art: that of a Polish woman who brought with her a decorative sensibility and a French artistic education, then, in London, translated both into a sociology of colour and a choreography of the crowd. Her work thus becomes more than an artistic document: it is a kind of visual essay on modernity.

“Swiss Cottage” does not so much record reality as teach us how to look: not at figures, but at trajectories; not at backgrounds, but at counterpoints and counterweights. It reveals the presence of women who guide the viewer’s gaze and set the rhythm of the entire composition. In this sense, Karłowska’s painting remains relevant today, as we consider the gendered mapping of the city and how art can narrate everyday life from a perspective that long remained invisible.