„Madame Paris” – a painting by Olga Boznańska
Olga Boznańska gained the greatest recognition for her portrait work. Of all the subjects she ever worked on, people fascinated her the most. From those closest to her - family and friends - to the people whose relationships with the painter we know very little about. This is the case with the subject of her portrait from around 1912, "Madame Paris", which is housed in the Polish Museum in America.
The painting "Madame Paris" was brought to the United States for the World Exhibition organized in New York in 1939. Due to the international recognition Olga Boznańska had gained by that time it was imperative that her work should be represented among the greatest achievements of the social, economic and cultural life of contemporary Poland displayed in the Polish Pavilion. The painting she selected for the exhibition left her Parisian studio in February 1939 and never returned to Europe. Its fate, like that of the other 11,000 exhibits from the Polish Pavilion, was thwarted by the outbreak of World War II. After the end of the exhibition in October 1940 some of the items were auctioned off, and most of them were deposited by the Pavilion’s curator Stefan Ropp at the Polish Museum in America in Chicago, where they are still housed at present.
The mysterious "Madame Paris"
Even though Olga Boznańska's work has been the subject of two major exhibitions in Polish museums in recent years (in 2014 at the National Museum in Krakow and in 2015 at the National Museum in Warsaw), due to the scarcity of historical sources on the topic it was not possible to find much information concerning the portrait "Madame Paris". Nevertheless, the data published at that time shed new light on Boznanska's painting, which had not even been precisely dated before. The term "before 1939" was only associated with the first appearance of the painting at the exhibition in New York. The more precise dating was made possible by establishing the identity of the sitter – Madame Paris was a French intellectual, philosopher, disciple of Henri Bergson and Wincenty Lutosławski. She died in the summer of 1912, during a journey through the Algerian desert, and establishing these facts helped researchers to narrow down the dating of the painting.
Little is known about the circumstances in which the portrait was created and the relationship between Boznańska and the French philosopher. An interesting trace is the "Madame de Paris" visiting card stored in the collection of the Polish Library in Paris. The address given on the card, which is located in the vicinity of Boznańska's last studio in Paris, was the place where spiritualistic séances were organized. Probably this is where the two ladies got acquainted.
The painting is undergoing conservation work, fot. Julita Siegel
"The painter of grey"
Looking at the painting "Madame Paris" it is difficult to disagree with this label often applied to Boznańska, also by herself. The large oil painting (dimensions 95x74 cm) presents Madame Paris in a sitting position with her hands folded on her lap. She gazes ahead and her mouth is slightly ajar. As usual in her paintings, Boznańska paid most attention to the face, leaving the rest of the figure blurred, unclear. The whole looks like shrouded in a mist and gives an impression of sadness and melancholy.
Boznanska's work is commonly associated with postimpressionism, but in fact she had created her own style characterized by a juxtaposition of vibrant color spots and focusing on the psychology of the person she portrayed.
Olga Boznańska - "the artist of the whole world"
As a daughter of a French woman and a Pole Olga Boznańska (1865-1940) spent most of her life outside Poland. After receiving her initial education in Cracow, she continued it in Munich, and in 1898 she moved to Paris. Boznańska had already been there many times before, and in 1896 her work had been exhibited at the Salon. In Paris she developed her career as an international portrait painter. Her portraits feature a plethora of artists, intellectuals and writers of the time. That is why the painter Gustaw Gwozdecki called her “the artist of artists”, and relating to her widespread popularity, he referred to her as “the artist of the whole world”.
The largest number of Olga Boznańska's paintings can be found in museums in Poland, but her works can also be admired in Paris, Lviv, Venice and the United States.
Conservation and restoration
In 2018 some of the paintings presented at the New York World Exhibition in 1939 and now housed in the collection of the Polish Museum in America underwent conservation and restoration financed by the POLONIKA Institute. Among them was the painting "Madame Paris", which underwent a series of treatments to restore it to its original condition. The painting was cleaned and the yellowed varnish was removed. The conservators from Parma Conservations Company filled the chip in the lower right-hand corner of the canvas and the areas of paint loss.
