Head of a brunette

Head of a Brunette from 1900, now in the National Museum in Warsaw, is among the more intimate of Ślewiński's figure studies — a close focus on a single face, the brown-haired Breton model treated with the simplified, flat-colour approach he had learned from Gauguin. Portrait heads and figure studies were a consistent strand of his Brittany work alongside the seascapes and landscapes. The National Museum in Warsaw holds the most significant collection of Ślewiński's work, reflecting the Polish state's investment in preserving the output of this important but little-known Polish modernist who spent most of his career in France.

The close-up format focuses all attention on the face, with the background reduced to flat colour areas that provide contrast without competing for the viewer's attention. Ślewiński delineates the face's main forms with clear contour lines in the Synthétist manner, filling them with simplified, evenly applied colour areas.