Portrait of a Lady with a Necklace 1914 - 1916

Olga Boznanska made this portrait with paint that's been layered, scrubbed, and glazed in a palette of dark browns and grays, punctuated by a muted red. I imagine her painting this lady not alla prima, but building up the image in many sessions, adding detail here, removing it there, the way we construct our own identities. Look at the way the figure emerges from the background, she’s not separate from it. I get the sense that Bozanska wants to capture the feeling of a person. You know, what's it like to sit with someone and just *be* with them? I feel for her, the way she’s searching for the right mark, the right color to capture the fleeting expression of her sitter. Just like Vuillard and Bonnard, Boznanska was exploring the quiet drama of the everyday. Artists have always looked to each other across generations, riffing on each other’s ideas, trying to see the world in new ways. It’s an ongoing conversation about what it means to be human.