Stanisław Lentz

Stanisław Lentz (1861–1920) was a Polish portrait and genre painter who served as director of the Warsaw School of Fine Arts from 1909 until his death. Trained in Kraków under Matejko, in Munich, and in Paris, Lentz produced the canonical portraits of his generation's Warsaw intellectuals, politicians, and aristocrats, alongside socially engaged genre scenes — most famously Strike (1910), depicting Łódź textile workers. He shaped Polish art education in the early twentieth century.

Lentz painted in a sober realist manner with warm dark palettes, careful drawing, and an emphasis on psychological characterization. His socially engaged scenes use restrained pose and grouping for political effect.

Lentz produced the defining painted portraits of late-imperial Warsaw's intellectual life and directed Polish art education through a transformative period.