Sketch Portrait of a Man – two-sided painting

The sketch portrait on the reverse of the 1905 canvas shows Boznańska's approach to rapid male portraiture — capturing the essential physiognomy and expression through economy of means rather than the layered build-up of her finished works. Such sketches served multiple purposes in her practice: as preliminary studies for potential finished portraits, as records of a sitter's appearance for her own reference, or simply as exercises in observational acuity practiced on available surfaces. The "sketch" designation in the title distinguishes this from her fully resolved portraits while acknowledging its own completeness as a record of observed experience. Male sitters in sketch form often reveal a less performed social self than the finished portrait — the natural face caught in a moment of unguarded attention rather than the sustained composure required for a formal sitting. The National Museum in Kraków preserves both faces of this double-sided work as evidence of her working method.

As a sketch, the handling prioritizes essential information — the structural lines of the face, the primary tonal masses, the expression's dominant character — over the atmospheric development of a finished portrait. The marks are more visible and gestural, revealing the observational process directly.