Portrait of Irena Anders

It is a bust of a young woman with short hair, her head tilted towards her right shoulder. The bust is a thin plaster cast with no back, which makes it unstable, covered with a grayish patina with a tinge of green. At the back of the head, we can see a nail which was probably used for the copying process called dotting.
Irena Maria Anders from the Jordan-Krąkowscy family (1894-1981) was born in Radom. She was the first wife of gen. Władysław Anders, though it wasn’t her first marriage. When she first met Anders, she was married to Jarosław Proszyński. They even had a son called Maciej, who was later brought up as Anders stepson and unfortunately died in September 1939. In order to marry the general, Irena had to leave the Catholic Church and join the Evangelical-Augsburg Church. It allowed her to marry Anders, who came from a Protestant family. Which was in line with the pre-war law but for the Catholic Church remained non-sacramental. In later years, General Anders had a second church wedding - this time Catholic - behaving similarly to his first wife. As part of the thanksgiving for leaving Soviet captivity, he converted to Catholicism. Therefore, in the light of the applicable canon law, he was a bachelor who could get married, because an Evangelical wedding was treated as a cohabitation for the Catholic Church. The second wife of Władysław Anders was Irena Renata (née Iryna Jarosewycz; stage name: Renata Bogdańska).
The bust is 54 cm high, 37 cm wide and 21 cm deep.