Guests at Olga Boznańska’s Studio: Viktor E. von Gebsattel and Alfred Wickenburg, with Paula Mordersohn-Becker also Nearby

Abstract

Alfred Wickenburg, in his unpublished Memoirs, briefly describes a visit to Olga Boznańska’s studio in 1907, where he was brought by Vincent E. Gebsattel, the pioneer of the theory of perception based on the correlation of time and memory and an analysis of aesthetic impressions, and who was fascinated by her work. Boznańska is presented in the text among such figures as Kessler, Vollard, Gide, Bonnard, Rodin and Rilke. Wickenburg mentions his visiting Cézanne’s exhibition with Rilke, and the special role played by Paula Modersohn-Becker, who was Rilke’s guide to Cézanne’s earlier exhibitions. He also suggests that Boznańska was befriended by Modersohn-Becker, a fact not mentioned in any of the literature on the subject. I have established, however, that the two woman painters lived in the same building at Montparnasse 49 at the turn of 1906/1907. It is not known whether they were friends, but their contact with each other seems probable. It can be inferred from Modersohn-Becker’s own papers that this possibility existed for a period of at least four months, and maybe for as long as seven.

Wickenburg’s Memoirs are one example of Boznańska’s undervalued artistic and intellectual contacts outside of the Polish-French circle.