Retrato de Jadwiga Sapieżyna, née Sanguszko

Boznańska, who had lived in Paris since 1898, painted this in Lwów in the autumn of 1910. There was no Polish state then. Lwów was a city of Austrian Galicia, and the sitter, Princess Jadwiga Sapieżyna, born a Sanguszko in 1830, belonged to the aristocracy that kept Polish public life going inside somebody else's empire. Her husband, Adam Stanisław Sapieha, had been one of the leaders of that effort in Galicia. Her son Adam Stefan would become archbishop of Kraków. Boznańska was blunt about her sitters, and while she was working she described the princess as a poor little sick hen. What she actually painted is quieter than that. The dress is barely indicated on the cardboard, and the attention goes to the face and to two small hands with rings.