Olga Boznańska. Kraków – Munich – Paris

In 1896 the “Girl with Chrysanthemums” was shown at the International Exhibition of Art in Berlin and at the Vienna Summer Salon. One of the pictures painted in that year, the “Girl in the Garden” (Ill. 25) is exceptionally interesting as a study in colour. In 1898 she completed the painting “Two Children on the Stairs” (Ill. 26): it was exhibited in the year Boznańska moved to Paris, in her exhibition in the Paris Galerie Georges Thomas under the title “Two Red Girls”. In 1904, in the TPSP exhibition in Krakòw, it was bought by the estate owner, Edward Aleksander Raczyński (1847-1926) for his gallery of paintings in the family residence in Rogalin. Boznańska’s “Girl” pictures have an affinity with symbolist paintings, but this is not a complete explanation. The statuesque pose and fixed gaze, a white handkerchief and the white chrysanthemums might point to Franz von Stuck’s picture of youthful “Innocentia” (1889, Manoukian collection, Paris), where the subject is holding a white lily as a sign of her innocence. Stuck’s painting was shown at the 1889 annual exhibition of the Munich Artists’ Cooperative where it immediately found a buyer. In symbolist paintings, the fixed gaze, golden hair, white veil, red clothes and blouses, and hats that resemble haloes, are all symbols for women caught between innocent childhood and blossoming eroticism. Like the emotion before motherhood, huge numbers of this sort of portrait were also painted in this style by artists such as Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Giovanni Segantini and Edvard Munch.

The extraordinary success enjoyed by Boznańska with her portrait of Paul Nauen was made clear in her continually rising number of exhibitions and journeys in the following years. In 1894 she took part in the International Art Exhibition presented by the Munich Secession, with a portrait painting and pastel portraits of two Russians, a “Miss Komonovska” and a “Mr Sviatlovsky”, of whom no more is known.[32] At the Greater Berlin Exhibition of Art she exhibited a painting entitled “Mother and Child” along with a study.[33] In the fourth exhibition of the Londoner Society of Portrait Painters in the New Gallery in Regent Street she received an honourable mention for a portrait of the German-English opera singer, Marie Brema (1856-1925).[34] As well as moving to a new studio in Georgenstraße in Munich (Ill. 27), she paid another visit to her relatives in Paris before embarking on a trip through Europe, with visits to Vienna, Berlin, Weimar, Valencia, Avignon, Geneva, Rapperswil and Milan.

[32] 1894. Verein Bildender Künstler Münchens e.V. Secession: Official catalogue of the International Art Exhibition of the Association of Pictorial Artists in Munich (A.V.) "Secession", page 13, no. 41; pages 33, 323, 324; online: http://digital.bib-bvb.de

[33] Greater Berlin Art Exhibition 1894. Catalogue, page 11, no. 197, 198; online: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de

[34] Exhibition cat. Olga Boznańska, Kraków 2014, page 312