Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (26.1985)

1. Władysław Wankie, The Grave of a Suicide, c. 1890, Private Collection, Łódź

to represent women as powerless creatures, defused of their strenght in any of a number o
ways. Images of women may suggest their complete passivity or their abandonment to the
emotions or their sensuality. It is easy to point out many representations of women as mourners
(usually for the loss of a man, as in Władysław Wankie’s Grave of a Suicide, c. 1890, (Collection
of Janusz Zagrodzki, Łódź, fig. 1), as highly glamorous and decorative objects of display (as the
portraits of Kazimierz Stabrowski), or as delicate, easily frightened creatures (as in Witold
Pruszkowski’s All Souls’ Day, 1888, National Museum hi Warsaw, fig. 2). It seems that one
can only turn to the extraordinary portraits of Olga Boznanska for relief: to see images of women
which project individual personality, presence, and power. The women in Boznanska’s paintings,
such as her Portrait of Anna Sariusz-Zaleska (1899, National Museum in Warsaw, fig. 3) or the
Portrait of Gabrielle Reval (1912, National Museum in Cracow, fig. 4) depict women who have
roles to play in life beyond the traditional ones and who have not abandoned their individuality
as they might have done had they been painted by a male artist, most of whom seem to be
principally interested in shoring up their eroding power in the face of feminists like Gabrielle
Reval who were increasingly challenging the patriarchal authority granted men by the Judeo-
-Christian and classical traditions.

Reference to specific examples will make obvious the many ways in which women are depicted
that depersonalize and devalue them as participants in the real conflicts and pleasures of everyday
life. Jacek Malczewski in Polish Hamlet — Portrait of Alexander Wielopolski (1902, National
Museum in Warsaw, fig. 5) shows a somewhat ludicrous figure of the aristocratic dilettante
between two female figures who symbolize the old and the new Poland. The older woman is
in shackles and the younger one is just breaking free, as the detached painter shields the delicate
flower he holds from her view. The powerlessness and forced submission of the gray-haired
woman speaks for itself, the younger woman, however, reveals her breasts at the same time
that she breaks her chains, a detail that at once increases her vulnerability and places her in the
realm of sexuality. Although this hoped-for Poland is free, her freedom cannot be separated
from her sexual allure for men and her power is linked to her femininity, not to a moral or intel-
lectual force.

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