Olga Boznańska (1865-1940), one of the most outstanding Polish artists of the turn of the 20th century, lived abroad for most of her life - first in Munich and, from 1898, permanently in Paris. Shaped in the circle of the Munich school, she soon created her own recognisable style, combining post-impressionist sensibility with deep psychological portraiture. Her works exude melancholy and spiritual tension, and the vibrant colour patches seem to breathe along with the figures. She has been called the 'painter of souls'.

Even contemporary critics recognised her extraordinary psychological talent. As the "Gazeta Lwowska" wrote in 1910: "Boznańska knows how to bring out and accentuate the individual content of the model in the eyes, in the mouth and in the whole expression of the face in a bizarre way, so that from her paintings one can judge almost the psychic properties of the person portrayed".

Boznańska was born on 15 April 1865 in Kraków. Her father, Adam Boznański, was an engineer, her mother a Frenchwoman, a teacher and the artist's first mentor. She studied under Kazimierz Pochwalski and at Adrian Baraniecki's Courses, and in 1886 she went to Munich, where she studied in the studios of Carl Kricheldorf and Wilhelm Dürr. Women were not allowed to study at the Academy, so Boznańska quickly built an independent position.

It was in Munich that her style was formed, inspired by the works of Velázquez, Manet and Whistler, Symbolist poetry and Japanese art, among others. She painted portraits, interiors and still lifes. In 1894, she won a gold medal in Vienna for her portrait of Paul Nauen. Since then, her works have been exhibited in Berlin, London, Prague, Lviv, Krakow and Paris, among other places.

In 1898, she settled permanently in Paris, on Boulevard Montparnasse. Her studio became a meeting place for Polish and French artists. She worked there for over 30 years, painting slowly, in the dark, surrounded by animals and objects. She smoked a lot, did not open the windows, took care of canaries, parrots and even mice. She was eccentric, but at the same time sensitive to the psyche of her models. As Max Goth wrote: 'Boznanska does not paint the eyes, only the gaze'.

Her portraits found their way into prestigious collections: The Orsay Museum and the Polish Library in Paris, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Telfair Museum in Savannah, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Ohara Museum of Art in Japan and many others. The Polish Museum in America holds the famous portrait 'Madame Paris' sent to the 1939 World Exhibition in New York.

Boznańska won the French Legion of Honour (1912), the Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature (1936), and the Order of Polonia Restituta (1938). In 1910 she visited Lviv, where six of her paintings were shown at the Universal Exhibition of Polish Art. The Lviv Art Gallery still has works by the artist, including the moving portrait of Hirszenberg and "Unknown Children".

After the First World War, Boznańska slowly disappeared from the mainstream. Increasingly lonely and depressed, she broke down after the suicide death of her sister Izabela. She died in poverty on 26 October 1940. She was buried in Les Champeaux cemetery in Montmorency.

In 2015, the National Museums in Krakow and Warsaw presented a major retrospective, featuring the Musee d'Orsay, the Louvre and the Thyssen-Bornemisza, which was seen by more than 160,000 people. Angelika Kuźniak in her biography 'Boznańska. Non finito' called her 'the painter of souls'.

You can read about the work of Olga Boznańska in Stefania Krzysztofowicz-Kozakowska's text .

We also write about the artist's most important paintings in foreign collections.

France
"Self-portrait with a white collar "
(ca. 1886), oil on board, Polish Library in Paris.
The oldest known self-portrait by Boznanska. On the reverse side of the painting is a copy of Antoin van Dyck's 'Photograph from the Cross'.

"Portrait of Jadwiga Trutschel "
(1902), Polish Library in Paris

" Portrait of Miss Dygat "
(1903), oil on cardboard, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
One of the most highly regarded portraits in Boznanska's oeuvre. The painting depicts Janina Zakrzewska, née Dygat, and was purchased by the French state during the Salon Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1904.

"Self-portrait by a lamp "
(c. 1910), oil on canvas, Polish Library in Paris.
An emotional and muted self-portrait of the artist, formerly the property of the sculptor Bolesław Biegas.

" Portrait of Elza z Sarów Krausowa " (also known as "Portrait of Mrs Libermann" or "Young Woman in White").
(1912), oil on cardboard, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
An outstanding portrait of a French-Jewish art collector whose collection later found its way to the National Museum in Krakow. Purchased for the collection of the Luxembourg Museum.

"Portrait of Mrs. D. "
(1913), oil on cardboard, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Identified with Helena Dygat. Two-sided painting - on the reverse is a sketch that may be a study for 'Still Life with Doll, Book and Flowers'.

United States
" Portrait of a Man in a Pink Shirt "
(ca. 1898), oil on board, Telfair Museum, Savannah (inv. no. 1910.9.a)
Depicts Eugeniusz Dąbrowa-Dąbrowski, an artist active in Berlin. On the reverse, portrait of an unknown woman, pastel (1910.9.b)

" Portrait of Natalie Barney "
(1907), oil on cardboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington.
Natalie Barney was an American writer and Belle Époque Parisian cultural icon.

" Madame Paris "
(c. 1912), oil on canvas, Polish Museum in America, Chicago.
Portrait of the French philosopher, pupil of Henri Bergson and Wincenty Lutoslawski. Exhibited at the 1939 World Exhibition in New York, the painting never returned to Europe.

"Portrait of a Woman in a Shawl "
(c. 1912), privately owned, USA.
Among other things, the painting was shown at an exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1913.

"Portrait of a Woman" at the Museum of Art
Houston, USA, inv. no. 56.23
Technical data: oil, canvas, 46.4 × 39.4 cm

'Woman in Black' at the Carnegie Museum of Art
(pre-1920), Pittsburgh, USA, inv. no. 28.4
Technical data: oil, board, 94.61 × 69.85 cm

"Portrait of a woman with a triple string of pearls "
(c. 1922), formerly in the collection of Jane Freeman, New York.
A work characterised by insightful psychological introspection.

Ukraine
"Portrait Study of a Woman "
(ca. 1903), oil on cardboard, Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv.
An intimate, subtle composition with a modest format.

" Portrait of the painter Hirszenberg "
(1904), oil on canvas, Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv.
Portrait of Leon Hirszenberg, long erroneously identified with his brother Samuel. For this painting, Boznańska was awarded a gold medal at the III Internationale Kunst - Ausstellung in Vienna in 1894 and a silver medal at the Universal Art Exhibition in Lviv

"Portrait of Children "
(1907), oil on cardboard, Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv.
Depicts the children of Amy Buyka - wife of the friendly printmaker Boleslaw Buyka.

"Self-portrait "
(1908), oil on cardboard, Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv.
An expressive self-portrait from the mature period of his work.

"Unknown Girl "
(ca. 1910), Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv.

Czech Republic
"Portrait of a young man "
(1927), oil on canvas, Museum of Literature, Prague

Japan
"Tulips "
(undated), Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki.
A still life exemplifying the artist's colour sensibility.

"Portrait of Mrs. L. "
(undated), Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki.
An intimate portrait of a woman with a muted mood and muted colours.

Canada
strong>"Portrait of a woman"
strong>1901, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Technical data: oil, canvas, 92.3 x 65.1 cm

Italy
" Portrait of Constance Dygatowe "
(1907), oil on canvas, Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna di Ca' Pesaro, Venice.
The painting was purchased by King Victor Emmanuel III during the XXI Biennale in 1938. Dygatowa, a Polish activist, ran a boarding house in Paris, in the same building as Boznanska's studio.

In addition, in the old articles, we recall the texts by Marcin Smolnicki " Portrait of the opera singer Jadwiga Lachowska " and the article " Olga Boznańska " from the "Fine Arts" of 1925.

Olga Boznańska died on 26 October 1940 in Paris and was buried at Les Champeaux cemetery in Montmorency , considered the pantheon of Polish emigration in France.