Olga Boznańska

Olga Boznańska painted people as if she were catching them a moment before they faded. Born in Kraków in 1865, she trained in Munich, studying Rembrandt and Velázquez in the galleries there, and from 1898 lived the rest of her life in Paris.

Her portraits are built from greys, greens and browns, the sitter emerging from a soft, smoky background with tired, searching eyes. Part of that effect was a stubborn technique. She painted in oils on plain grey cardboard, which drank the oil and left the surface matte and chalky, and she worked slowly, over dozens of sittings, refusing to hurry a face.

She never married, kept a famously cluttered studio full of cats, and grew more isolated and poorer as fashions moved past her. She died in Paris in 1940, having won medals across Europe yet leaving little money behind, her best portraits now among the treasures of the National Museum in Kraków.