Olga Boznańska (1865–1940)

Olga Boznańska, was a Polish painter of the turn of the 20th century. She was a notable female painter in Poland and Europe, and was stylistically associated with the French impressionism. Boznańska was born in Kraków during foreign partitions of Poland.

She was the daughter of a railway engineer, Adam Nowina Boznański, and Eugenia Mondan of French origin. Boznańska learned drawing first with Józef Siedlecki and Kazimierz Pochwalski, locally. She studied at the Adrian Baraniecki School for Women.

Boznańska débuted in 1886 at the Kraków Association of Friends of Fine Arts exhibition. From 1886–1890 she studied art in the private schools of Karl Kricheldorf and Wilhelm Dürr in Munich. From then on she devoted herself mostly to portraits, still lifes and occasionally landscapes.

In 1898, she joined the Society of Polish Artists “Sztuka” and in the same year moved to Paris, where she became a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and started teaching at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and joined the Polish Society of Literature and Art (Polskie Towarzystwo Literacko-Artystyczne). 

Her most famous 1894 portrait of an unknown child Girl with Chrysanthemums fascinated her contemporaries by its symbolist atmosphere and psychological insight.