Olga Boznańska. Kraków – Munich – Paris

In 1895 she took over the direction of a painting school owned by the landscape and genre artist, Theodor Hummel (1864-1939), for a short time. In the same year she travelled with her sister, Iza, to Switzerland. In 1895, 1896 and 1898 she showed portrait paintings at the International Exhibition of Art presented by the Munich Secession, and also at the Greater Berlin Exhibition of Art in 1895, 1897 and 1898. In 1896 she turned down an offer by Julian Fałat (1853-1929), who had been appointed director of the School of Fine Arts/Szkoła Sztuk Pięknych in Kraków in the previous year, to become head of the proposed department for women. In 1896 and 1897 some of her portraits of children were shown at art shows presented by the Société nationale des beaux-arts in exhibition buildings in the Paris Champs-de-Mars.[35] In 1897 she travelled to Paris with Irena Serda. That year she contributed to a periodical edited by the younger generation of the Polish artist’s community, entitled “Jednodniówka”; these included Czajkowski, Władysław Wankie, Stanisław Radziejowski and Feliks Wygrzywalski. The forty-page periodical only appeared once. It followed the modern artistic design used in the Munich periodical “Jugend“ (English: Youth) that had been founded in the previous year, and contained a loose succession of reproductions of paintings, drawings and vignettes by older and younger Polish painters, one of which was a portrait of a lady by Boznańska, as well as prose, poetry, dramatics sketches and pieces by Polish writers and composers.[36] In 1898 Boznańska had two children’s pictures, “Lad“ and “Girl with Child“, in the exhibition presented by the Berlin Society of Women Artists and Female Friends in the Royal Academy in Unter den Linden.[37] In Kraków she was made a member of the League of Polish Artists “Sztuka”/Towarzystwo Artystów Polskich “Sztuka”, that had been founded in the previous year. In Paris she showed 24 works in a joint exhibition with her cousin Daniel Mordant, presented by the art dealer, Georges Thomas (1842-1915) in his gallery on the Avenue Trudaine.[38] In October 1898 she left Munich for Paris where she moved into an apartment in the Rue Campagne Première No. 17 in the artists’ quarter Montparnasse, not far from the Jardin du Luxembourg.

No one knows exactly why she moved to Paris. She would later say that she followed her sister Iza, who wanted to continue her studies there after a stay in Switzerland.[39] It may indeed have been the case that her family ties and the fact that Paris was considered the capital of European art were the reason for the move. Whereas realism and naturalism were being replaced by symbolism and Jugendstil in Munich in the 90s, Paris was still the city of the Impressionists. Even Whistler had had a studio there since 1892, also in Montparnasse, a few streets away from Boznańska’s future address. She had been orientated towards Paris since 1895 when Mordant had helped her find a place to live in February that year, the closing date for entries to the most important exhibition salons,[40] including that of the Société nationale des beaux-arts on the Champ-de-Mars, where she participated for the first time in the following year. The 1898 exhibition presented by Georges Thomas, which mostly showed young, unknown artists, was not only her first exhibition in Paris but her first success. Here she exhibited portraits, pictures of children, still-lifes, flowers, “Italians“ and a “Breton Woman”, whereas Mordant exhibited graphic reproductions, dry point etchings in the manner of Rembrandt, Rubens, Tiepolo, Delacroix and modern masters like Meissonier, Besnard and Carrière.[41]

[35] Exposition nationale des beaux-arts. Exposés au Champs-de-Mars. Catalogue illustré des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture et gravure, Paris 1896, page VIII, no. 192; Paris, 1897, page VIII, no. 169; online: https://archive.org

[36] Reprint of the publication: Jednodniówka - Eintagszeitung. Neuausgabe, edited by Zbigniew Fałtynowicz / Eliza Ptaszyńska, Muzeum Okręgowe w Suwałkach, Suwałki 2008, also catalogue of the exhibition “Signatur - anders geschrieben. Anwesenheit polnischer Künstler im Lichte von Archivalien”, Polnisches Kulturzentrum, Munich 2008; Digital version of the historic periodical “Jednodniówka“: https://polona.pl/item/373549/8/  

[37] XVI Art Exhibition of the Association of Artists and Friends of Art, Berlin 1898, no. 31, 32; online: http://www.digishelf.de

[38] Article on Boznańska’s portrait of the art dealer Georges Thomas, 1899, privately owned, online: http://catalogue.gazette-drouot.com/ref/lot-ventes-aux-encheres.jsp?id=4002557

[39] Marcin Samlicki: Olga Boznańska, Sztuki Piękne 1925/26, year 2, no. 3, page 106

[40] Ewa Bobrowska: Paris of Her Dreams, in: Exhibition cat. Olga Boznańska, Kraków 2014, page 55

[41] Catalogue. Expositions des œuvres de Mlle Olga Boznanska (peinture) et de M. Daniel Mordant (gravure), Galerie G. Thomas, 17, avenue Trudaine, Paris [1898]