Olga Boznańska

Born in Kraków in 1865, Boznańska was first taught to draw by her mother before receiving private lessons from artists including Kazimierz Pochwalski, Antoni Piotrowski and Wilhelm Dürr. Intending to further her education, she moved to Munich in 1886 but, unable to access the Academy, was forced to continue taking expensive private lessons. Nevertheless, she continued to hone her skills in portraits, still lifes and landscapes leading to her winning the gold medal at the 1894 Vienna International Exhibition.

Regarded as an equal by many of her male contemporaries who encouraged and advised her, she was admired not only for her technical ability but also for her intellectual rigor and self-possession. After declining a position as the Director of Women’s Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, she instead chose to take over from the genre and landscape painter Theodor Hummel as the head of his painting school in Munich, where she remained until 1896.

Boznańska then moved to Paris where her studio became a meeting place for French and Polish artists, writers and intellectuals, and her work, neither academic nor avant-garde, delved deeper into the psychological nature of her models. Shortly after her arrival, she joined the Society of Polish Artists, known as Sztuka, eventually becoming its President in 1913. She also joined the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and founded the Society of Polish Artists in Pais, all while supporting herself financially by taking a teaching position at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

Widely acclaimed in her lifetime, she was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 1912 and, in 1938, awarded the Polonia Restituta medal, Poland’s highest civilian decoration. Today, she is regarded as one of the most significant painters in Polish art history with her work residing in the collections of the National Museums in Wrocław, Kraków, Poznań and Warsaw as well as internationally at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice.