Portrait of Feliks Jasieński 1907

Olga Boznanska painted this portrait of Feliks Jasieński with oil on canvas sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. The tones here are dusky, almost melancholic, but there's a real sense of the artist finding her way through the darks and lights. It feels like Boznanska is using the process of painting to really *see* Jasieński. I love how the surface has this blurry, almost out-of-focus quality, like a faded memory. Look at the way she renders the hands, all soft edges and muted color, they're not really *there*, but they suggest so much about the sitter. The chair he’s sitting on is rendered with these loose strokes of blue and cream that give the impression of plushness without defining the form. The light reflecting off his white shirt is pretty great too, a way of drawing your eye towards the sitter. Boznanska's contemporary James Whistler comes to mind here, another artist with a penchant for tonal painting and psychological nuance. Art's just one big conversation, right? A painting like this is an invitation to slow down, look closely, and feel deeply, it gives space for our own thoughts and feelings to come into play.