The creative position of women in the 19^th century was subject to numerous conditions and threats. Conditions primarily originated in the professionalization and institutionalization of artistic life, which — at least for women of this generation — were a hindrance to an artistic career. Difficulties arose from the limited access to institutions, from customary conventions, but also from a life full of personal tragedies and financial dependency. The women of Olga Boznańska’s generation constituted the first distinct group practicing art professionally, unlike their predecessors, who, with few exceptions, were amateurish, often talented and artistically educated.

Konstanty Laszczka (1865–1956) seems to have been less famous than his contemporary Young Poland artists, with many of whom he befriended and portrayed in his works. Was his style not original enough?

The painter — a small-bodied young man with the look of an intellectual — represented himself in the form of a bust portrait in a foreground, against a neutral background. He looks at us attentively through his pince-nez. Although portrayed principally en face, he is marked by a lively posture, manifesting itself in an asymmetrical position of Mehoffer's shoulders, the artist's head being slightly turned to the right, with his face being somewhat turned in the opposite direction.

Jacek Malczewski is a painter of the largest number of self-portraits in the history of Polish art. As was joked in a Green Balloon’s [Zielony Balonik] cabaret show in Jama Michalika, the artist represented himself “Once in a flat hat, once without that | Once as a professor, once as a lord (…) | Once in a sweater, and with a panther | With a tail or without one.”

Jan Stanisławski (1860–1907) is one of the greatest painters of the Young Poland period and an excellent landscape painter, known primarily for his miniature scenery painting. At the end of the 19^th century, Stanisławski made numerous artistic journeys. He visited Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. He also travelled many times to his homeland: Ukraine.

Jan Stanisławski (1860–1907) is one of the greatest painters of the Young Poland period and an excellent landscape painter, known primarily for his miniature landscapes. The Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków stores several landscapes of small sizes typical of the painter. Among them is a painting depicting a garden in Dębniki near Kraków.

This consists of a wooden cassette, iron-shod with brass, with a two-winged hinged lid, a brass shield at the front, with “WIELICZKA” and a crown at the top. It contains a document granting honorary citizenship of the city of Wieliczka to Doctor Kazimierz Junosza-Gałecki.

Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński had a unique opportunity not only to get to know Wyspiański, but also to sit on the furniture designed by this Kraków artist on a daily basis. How did he assess the suite designed for the lounge?
Years later, he recalled:
“Only once did we dare protest and only after a lengthy argument about who would...

Recognising Wyspiański’s genius, Boy-Żeleński joked that if he were asked to design a locomotive, as a complete artist, he would have scrupulously brought the completed design on the next day. It is no wonder then that furniture became one of the fields of his activity.

This painting, characteristically shaped as a vertically extended rectangle, is a portrait of the artist's wife against a background of the interior of a summer apartment. This piece was created in 1904 in Zakopane, where the Mehoffers rented a newly completed wooden highland house for a few months.