Portrait of a Man – two-sided painting

This double-sided portrait of an unidentified man, also from Boznańska's productive year of 1900, belongs to the series of paired works on double-sided supports that characterize her output from this period. An unknown male sitter allows the portrait to function as a formal study — an investigation of how a man's face and bearing yield to her particular approach — free from the social or psychological demands of a commissioned likeness. Boznańska's ability to bring the same intensity to anonymous sitters as to the named figures in her portraits is a mark of her commitment to the genre as an end in itself rather than a social function.

Boznańska's feathery, atmospheric handling envelops the male figure in a tonal field that is both softening and subtly searching. The face emerges from the painted atmosphere through accumulated color touches, the warm flesh tones set against the grey-silver ground that is her atmospheric signature.