Portrait of a Boy in His Gymnasium Uniform

Olga Boznańska often exhibited her portraits without any information as to whom they depict. This practice was the result of her artistic conviction that it was more important to create an ideal composition than to faithfully reproduce the features of the subject. We can only surmise that the boy shown in this painting was a 4th year student of a Krakow middle school, as suggested by the four stripes on his uniform collar. The artist painted this portrait while staying in Munich in the early 1890s, most likely around the time she produced her most splendid work of that period, In the Orangery, shown in the centre of this room. The portrait of the school boy is a strong testimony to her fascination with the work of Europe-based American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who in his colour studies adopted a music composition approach in the process of creating painting compositions, treating colour accents like musical tones. Like Whistler often did in his portraits, Boznańska set the boy against a solid grey backdrop. The painting, however, is not simply a symphony in grey in the spirit of Whistler – the young Boznańska also reveals in it her exceptional psychological acuity. Her portraits were always marked by a veracity in reflecting the model’s character and a reluctance for any sort of flattery. In this painting, Boznańska wonderfully captures the self-assuredness of youth, while still conveying a certain sense of apprehension.