Ubiór czy kostium? Rola mody w malarstwie i życiu Olgi Boznańskiej
Dress or costume? The role of fashion in painting and life of Olga Boznańska

Summary/Abstract: In Olga Boznańska’s portrait painting, clothes necessarily play an important role, and in her paintings one can trace changes in fashion, especially women’s fashion, over the course of fifty years. This does not mean, however, that the artist was an impartial documentalist of the surrounding reality and a recorder of the manner in which her models were dressed. Formed by the artistic milieu in Munich, she knew perfectly well the methods of working with costumes practiced there and the principles of historical painting adjusting the costume to the adopted style inspired by the works of the former master. However, she quickly rejected the burden of historical references, without giving up, however, minor or major interference with the portrait of the person portrayed, which was confirmed by her contact with the works of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The analysis of her portraits allows us to trace how she used clothes to reveal the model’s personality, but above all, to achieve the intended formal effects, treating the clothes as inspiration and a pretext for studying color nuances. For this purpose, she often used pinned up and draped fabrics, shawls, scarves or furs, with which she gave the painted clothes the character of an ephemeral painting costume. Her own, more and more old-fashioned clothes could not only be a testimony to the deepening depression and financial problems, but rather served to emphasize the artist’s dedication to art and the special status of the artist by renouncing temporal life and the traditional role assigned to women, whose status was determined especially by fashionable clothes. and impeccable appearance.

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