In the shadow of patriarchy

Born in 1865 in Kraków, she also took her first painting lessons there at private art schools. However, the standard of education for women in the Austrian partition at that time was not sufficient for an ambitious young woman dreaming of an international career – she could not compete on equal terms with men, and access to higher education was denied to her on the grounds of her gender.

Although the education of young women was generally viewed negatively due to the social roles assigned to them, Boznańska’s parents were open to supporting their daughters’ ambitions. They understood the importance of education and the emancipation of women, both for Olga and her younger, musically gifted sister Iza.

Olga Boznańska in Kraków and Munich

Olga’s first teacher was her mother, Eugenia Mondan. Her earliest drawings date from this period and are characterised by simplicity and an intuitive sense of colour. Boznańska then studied at the Adrian Baraniecki Higher Courses for Women – the finest school for women available in Kraków at the time – under Antoni Adam Piotrowski, Kazimierz Pochwalski and Józef Siedlecki.

The next stage in Boznańska’s artistic development was marked by her stay in Munich between 1885 and 1897. In the Bavarian capital, the painter honed her technique under the guidance of Karl Kricheldorf and Wilhelm Dürr, took part in exhibitions, made social connections and achieved her first artistic successes. During her stay, she worked in her own studio, whilst remaining under the guidance of the Polish painters Józef Brandt and Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski.

It was during her time in Munich that she produced the works which opened the doors for Boznańska to the most important European art salons. Among these works are, amongst others, the Japanese-inspired ‘Flower Girls’ (1889), ‘Portrait of Paul Nauen’ (1893), which won a silver medal at the General Art Exhibition in Lviv, a gold medal at the international exhibition in Vienna and an award at the exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Warsaw, as well as her most recognisable work – ‘The Girl with Chrysanthemums’ (1894).

Also created in Munich were: the exotic ‘Japanese Woman’, ‘Studio Interior’, and numerous portraits, including that of Eugeniusz Dąbrowa-Dąbrowski (1898), which would soon become her hallmark.

Montparnasse and her career in Paris

From 1898, Boznańska lived in Paris, a city with which she remained closely associated for the rest of her life. The French capital enabled her to fulfil her dream of becoming a professional artist, which was of paramount importance to her. As she herself emphasised, if she could no longer paint, she would have to cease to live.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the city to which Olga Boznańska moved as a mature woman in her thirties (though, like many female artists, she consistently took a few years off her age) was teeming with artistic life. It was here that modern artistic movements took shape and exhibitions were held that changed the face of the era.

Within the metropolis’s diverse creative milieu, Boznańska became fully independent – both in her personal and professional life. She worked in two studios, rented successively in the Montparnasse district. Her first address in Paris was 114 Rue de Vaugirard, and her second, from 1907, was 49 Rue de Montparnasse – a studio where James Whistler himself had previously worked.

The period from her arrival in the French capital until the outbreak of the First World War was a time of great success for Olga Boznańska, marked by numerous commissions, important exhibitions and awards. She regularly took part in exhibitions all over the world – not only in Paris and Vienna, but also in Amsterdam, London, Munich, Berlin and the United States.

She took part in both exhibitions of international significance and – it is worth emphasising – in exhibitions of women’s art, which were little appreciated at the time. From 1898 onwards, she also sent her works to her hometown of Kraków, mainly for exhibitions organised by the Polish Artists’ Society ‘Sztuka’, initially as a member and later also as its president. Olga Boznańska was the first woman to be admitted to this prestigious, male-dominated circle of artists, and one of only two women in the society’s history, alongside the sculptor Zofia Trzcińska-Kamińska.

The crowning achievement of Olga Boznańska’s exhibition career was her solo exhibition, organised as part of the 21st Venice Biennale in 1938. During this prestigious event, five of the artist’s paintings were sold. Interestingly, one of them, ‘Portrait of Konstancja Dygatowa’ (1907), found its way into the prestigious collection of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.

Frequent and regular participation in exhibitions was a deliberate strategy on Boznańska’s part to build her reputation. Thanks to well-thought-out promotional efforts, her works found their way into both private and state collections during her lifetime, which served as a mark of distinction and confirmation of the high artistic standard of her work.

Boznańska’s style – not just portraits

During her time in Paris, Olga Boznańska developed her own original approach to portraiture. In her compositions, she focused on the model’s face, capturing their psychological state, character and mood. Sketch-like depictions of figures, a nervous brushstroke, and a narrow colour palette dominated by greys and browns convey a story of the human soul that is often unsparing.

A distinctive feature of Boznańska’s portraits was sadness and melancholy, as she mentioned in a letter to her friend from Kraków, Julia Gradomska, in 1908: ‘All the critics write that they are sad; what am I to do, that they are sad? I cannot be other than I am; if the underlayer is sad, then everything that grows from it must be sad too.” Despite the critics’ unflattering opinions regarding the prevailing mood in her work, Boznańska believed in the artistic value of her pieces.

Boznańska’s most virtuosic works date from the early decades of the 20th century – portraits that give the impression of being delicately veiled, rendered in light colours and enlivened by white. The clients for Boznańska’s portraits were mainly members of the intelligentsia, and occasionally the middle classes or the aristocracy; the artist painted portraits of wealthy émigrés as well as children who were sad and weary from posing for long periods. These paintings were created both in Paris and during her almost annual summer stays in Kraków.

In the final years of her life, plants became almost the sole subject of her work. Olga Boznańska took particular delight in painting wilted flowers, symbolising transience, and those in full bloom, expressing the vital forces of nature. She usually created small, sketch-like compositions. Full of finesse and subtlety, her works exuded tranquillity and peace.

Boznańska’s body of work also includes landscapes, consisting mainly of views stretching out from the windows of her successive studios. Olga Boznańska created them for her own pleasure, which is why they are usually experimental, boldly executed compositions in which the artist allowed herself greater creative freedom.

Olga Boznańska’s final years in Paris

We know about the last twelve years of Boznańska’s life from the accounts and letters of Edward Chmielarczyk, a lawyer who was a friend of the Boznański family, and Jan Szymański, a counsellor at the Polish Embassy who supported the artist in Paris. During this period, the artist faced health and financial problems, as well as concerns for her sister Iza’s well-being. Following Iza’s unexpected suicide in 1934, Olga never regained her inner balance.

Olga Boznańska died on 26 October 1940. The day before, she had been admitted to the Sisters of Charity hospital on Boulevard Saint-Marcel, where she received the last rites. She was buried a few days later, on 31 October, at Les Champeaux Cemetery in Montmorency, near Paris, in a necropolis regarded as the pantheon of the Polish émigré community in France.