Girl with Chrysanthemums

This beautiful piece of art was exhibited in 1896 in Berlin at the Internationale Kunstausstellung and at the Sommersalon in Vienna, where it was noticed by William Ritter, a critic from the Paris "Gazette des Beaux Arts". It is one of the most famous and most recognizable paintings by Olga Boznańska, which is the subject of numerous, often conflicting or controversial, interpretations. The painting was created in 1894 in Munich and is considered the most perfect work of Olga Boznańska. It is a true show of colours by the artist limited to the subtle shades of silver and grey in the form of delicate brush strokes. By presenting the girl against the neutral and greyish-white wall, the artist created a new type of child’s portrait breaking with the previous convention of presenting children in representative clothes in elegant and stylish surroundings. The girl, who is standing alone and appears serious for her age, dressed in a modest dress and holding bright chrysanthemums in her intertwined hands, attracts attention with her sickly pale face and large eyes, amazing in their blackness, shining as if in fever. The portrait evokes a mood of reverie, sadness, mystery and understatement, similar to the atmosphere of the poems of Maurice Maeterlinck – known and valued by Boznańska. The National Museum in Cracow (Poland) has organized an exhibition of the works of Olga Boznańska (1865-1940), the most illustrious Polish painter of late 19th and early 20th century. The exhibition opened last weekend and it presents about 170 of the artist’s most important and most representative works, borrowed from museums and private collections in Poland.