Portrait of a woman in a hat

'Portrait of a Woman in a Hat' (1915) is a late work by Lentz that demonstrates how Polish portraiture adapted to changing fashion and social mores in the final years before the First World War transformed European society. The fashionable hat — a prominent feature of women's dress in the 1910s, when elaborate hat styles marked social identity and participation in modernity — makes this portrait something of a social document as well as a formal likeness. By 1915, Warsaw was under German military occupation following the fall of Russian control, and civilian life continued under dramatically altered circumstances. That Lentz was still accepting portrait commissions in 1915 speaks to the continuity of cultural life even amid military occupation. The woman's hat and its positioning in the composition would have been as much an aesthetic statement as any other element; millinery was a serious cultural form in this period. The National Museum in Warsaw holds the canvas as one of Lentz's final documented works before his death in 1920.

Women's portrait commissions of this period allowed Lentz to engage with costume as a significant visual element alongside the face. The hat's structure — whether wide-brimmed, flower-adorned, or simply elegant — provides compositional geometry that frames and sometimes partially shadows the face. His handling of fabric and decoration would differ from his spare male portraits.