Portrait of a Woman – two-sided painting

Like the companion double-sided portrait of Mrs. Getter, this 1900 work demonstrates Boznańska's practice of painting on both sides of a canvas support, a habit that reveals the intensive working pace and material economy of a professional painter operating in Paris. The anonymous female subject is treated with the same quiet intensity Boznańska brought to all her portraiture regardless of the sitter's social standing. This approach — giving equal seriousness to identified patrons and unnamed sitters — reflects Boznańska's fundamental commitment to portraiture as a form of human encounter rather than social record. The Kraków National Museum preserves this as testimony to her working practice.

The two-sided format is suggested by the atmospheric looseness of the painting — a quality of the study rather than the finished public commission. Boznańska's characteristic grey-silver tonality and feathery touch create an intimate, provisional quality appropriate to a work that existed on both sides of the canvas.