抱菊花的女孩

By 1894 Olga Boznanska had left Krakow for Munich, where a woman still could not enrol in the state academy and had to train in private studios on the edge of the official art world. This is where she painted a child she never named. Portraits of children in that decade were usually sweet and decorative, made to please the parents who paid for them. This one is not. The girl stands close to us with loose red hair, an unsmiling face, and very large dark eyes that hold you longer than a child's portrait normally does. In her hands she holds a bunch of white chrysanthemums, the flower Poles bring to graves in autumn. Boznanska worked thinly, letting the grey ground of the cardboard show through the paint, so the whole figure seems to hover a little out of focus.