Background
Boznańska was born in Krakow during foreign partitions of Poland. She was the daughter of a railway engineer, Adam Nowina Boznański, and Eugenia née Mondan.
Boznańska was born in Krakow during foreign partitions of Poland. She was the daughter of a railway engineer, Adam Nowina Boznański, and Eugenia née Mondan.
She studied at the Adrian Baraniecki School for Women.
She was a notable female painter in Poland and Europe, and was stylistically associated with the French impressionism. Boznańska learned drawing first with Józef Siedlecki and Kazimierz Pochwalski locally. From 1886–1890 she studied art in the private schools of Karl Kricheldorf and Wilhelm Dürr in Munich.
From then on she devoted herself mostly to portraits, still lifes and occasionally landscapes.
Her most famous 1894 portrait of an unknown child Girl with Chrysanthemums fascinated her contemporaries by its symbolist atmosphere and psychological insight. She died in Paris at the age of 75.
In 1898, she joined the Society of Polish Artists "Sztuka" and in the same year moved to Paris, where she became a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts as well as the Polish Society of Literature and Art (Polskie Towarzystwo Literacko-Artystyczne).