Olga Boznańska (1865–1940), one of the most outstanding Polish artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, spent most of her life abroad: first in Munich, and from 1898 permanently in Paris. Though shaped by the Munich School, she soon developed her own distinctive and recognisable style, combining post-Impressionist sensibility with a deep psychological approach to portraiture. Her paintings are imbued with melancholy and spiritual tension, and her vibrant brushwork seems to breathe with the figures it evokes. She was often called the “painter of souls.”

Even contemporary critics recognised her remarkable psychological insight. As Gazeta Lwowska observed in 1910: “Boznańska has an extraordinary ability to draw out and highlight the individual essence of her model ‒ in the eyes, the mouth, and the entire expression of the face ‒ so that one can almost deduce the psychological nature of the person portrayed.”

Boznańska was born on 15 April 1865 in Kraków. Her father, Adam Boznański, was an engineer; her mother, a Frenchwoman, was a teacher and the artist’s first mentor. She studied with Kazimierz Pochwalski and at Adrian Baraniecki’s courses, and in 1886 left for Munich, where she trained in the studios of Carl Kricheldorf and Wilhelm Dürr. Women were not admitted to the Academy, so Boznańska quickly established herself as an independent artist.

It was in Munich that her style took shape, drawing inspiration from the works of Velázquez, Manet and Whistler, from Symbolist poetry, and from Japanese art. She painted portraits, interiors and still lifes. In 1894, she was awarded a gold medal in Vienna for her portrait of Paul Nauen. From that point on, her work was exhibited in Berlin, London, Prague, Lwów (Lviv in modern-day Ukraine), Kraków and Paris.

In 1898, Boznańska settled permanently in Paris, establishing her studio on Boulevard Montparnasse. It soon became a gathering place for both Polish and French artists. For over thirty years, she painted there: slowly, in near darkness, surrounded by animals and personal objects. She smoked heavily, refused to open the windows, and cared for her canaries, parrots and even mice. Eccentric by nature, she was nonetheless acutely sensitive to the psychology of her sitters. As Max Goth observed: “Boznańska does not paint eyes, she paints the gaze.”

Her portraits entered numerous prestigious collections, including the Musée d’Orsay and the Polish Library in Paris, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Telfair Museum in Savannah, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and the Ōhara Museum of Art in Japan. The Polish Museum of America holds the celebrated portrait Madame Paris, sent to the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.

Boznańska was honoured with the French Légion d’honneur (1912), the Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature (1936), and the Order of Polonia Restituta (1938). In 1910, she visited Lwów (Lviv in modern-day Ukraine), where six of her works were shown at the Universal Exhibition of Polish Art. The Lviv National Art Gallery still holds several of her paintings, including the moving Portrait of Hirszenberg and Portrait of Children.

After the First World War, Boznańska gradually withdrew from the artistic mainstream. Increasingly isolated and struggling with depression, she suffered a breakdown following the suicide of her sister Izabela. She died in poverty on 26 October 1940 and was buried at Les Champeaux Cemetery in Montmorency.

In 2015, the National Museums in Kraków and Warsaw staged a major retrospective of Boznańska’s work, organised in collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay, the Louvre and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. The exhibition attracted over 160,000 visitors. In her biography Boznańska. Non finito, Angelika Kuźniak described her as “a painter of souls.”

A study of Olga Boznańska’s oeuvre can be found in the text by Stefania Krzysztofowicz-Kozakowska. We also highlight several of the artist’s most significant paintings held in international collections:

France
Self-Portrait with White Collar
(c. 1886), oil on panel, Polish Library in Paris
The earliest known self-portrait by Boznańska. The reverse bears a copy of The Descent from the Cross by Anthony van Dyck.

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 esteemed portraits in Boznańska’s oeuvre. The sitter is Janina Zakrzewska, née Dygat. The painting was acquired by the French state during the 1904 Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

Self-Portrait by Lamplight
(c. 1910), oil on canvas, Polish Library in Paris
A contemplative and emotionally restrained self-portrait, formerly owned by the sculptor Bolesław Biegas.

Portrait of Elza Kraus, née Sary
(also known as Portrait of Mrs Libermann or Young Woman in White)
(1912), oil on cardboard, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
A striking portrait of a French-Jewish art collector whose collection was later incorporated into the holdings of the National Museum in Kraków. The painting was originally acquired by the Musée du Luxembourg.

Portrait of Madame D.
(1913), oil on cardboard, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Believed to portray Helena Dygat. The painting is double-sided—on the reverse is a sketch that may be a study for Still Life with a Doll, Book and Flowers.

United States
Portrait of a Man in a Pink Shirt
(c. 1898), oil on panel, Telfair Museum, Savannah (inv. no. 1910.9.a)
A depiction of Eugeniusz Dąbrowa-Dąbrowski, an artist active in Berlin. The reverse features a pastel portrait of an unknown woman (1910.9.b).

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

Madame Paris
(c. 1912), oil on canvas, Polish Museum of America, Chicago
A portrait of a French philosopher, a student of Henri Bergson and Wincenty Lutosławski. The painting was exhibited at the 1939 New York World’s Fair and never returned to Europe.

Portrait of a Woman in a Shawl
(c. 1912), private collection, USA
Exhibited at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1913.

Portrait of a Woman, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA (inv. no. 56.23)
Oil on canvas, 46.4 × 39.4 cm

Woman in Black, Carnegie Museum of Art
(before 1920), Pittsburgh, USA (inv. no. 28.4)
Oil on panel, 94.61 × 69.85 cm

Portrait of a Woman with a Triple Strand of Pearls
(c. 1922), formerly in the collection of Jane Freeman, New York
A composition marked by refined psychological insight.

Ukraine
Portrait Study of a Woman
(c. 1903), oil on cardboard, Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv
A small, intimate composition of great subtlety.

Portrait of the Painter Hirszenberg
(1904), oil on canvas, Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv
A portrait of Leon Hirszenberg, long misidentified as 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 General Exhibition of Polish Art in Lwów.

Portrait of Children
(1907), oil on cardboard, Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv
Depicts the children of Amy Buyka, wife of the artist’s friend, the graphic artist Bolesław Buyka.

Self-Portrait
(1908), oil on cardboard, Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv
A striking self-portrait from Boznańska’s mature period.

Unknown Girl
(c. 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 that exemplifies the artist’s refined sensitivity to colour.

Portrait of Madame L.
(undated), Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki
An intimate portrait of a woman, distinguished by its muted palette and contemplative mood.

Canada
Portrait of a Woman
(1901), oil on canvas, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Dimensions: 92.3 × 65.1 cm

Italy
Portrait of Konstancja Dygatowa
(1907), oil on canvas, Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna di Ca’ Pesaro, Venice
Acquired by King Victor Emmanuel III at the 21st Venice Biennale in 1938. Dygatowa, a prominent Polish émigré activist, ran a guesthouse in Paris in the same building as Boznańska’s studio.

Earlier publications also bring Marcin Smolnicki’s Portrait of the Opera Singer Jadwiga Lachowska and the 1925 article Olga Boznańska in Sztuki Piękne.

Olga Boznańska died on 26 October 1940 in Paris and was buried at Les Champeaux Cemetery in Montmorency, widely recognised as a pantheon of Polish émigré culture in France.