(Last Updated On July 9, 2022)
Stanisław Wyspiański – Śpiący Staś (1904)
Wikipedia: Stanisław Wyspiański
Edit: I have since learned that this is a painting of Wyspiański’s son, an easy mistake to make. However, I will leave this post anyway, as it exemplifies the fact that up until the early 20th century, preschool-aged boys were often dressed very similarly to girls, wearing long hair and even dresses. – Pip
Stanisław Wyspiański had also a daughter, Helena (called by her Polish diminutive Helenka), born in 1895. She was portrayed by her father several times.
Helenka’s head (1900)
Helenka with a vase and flowers (1902)
In his work “Maternity” (1905)
the artist depicted his wife breastfeeding their son and a double portrait of Helenka, seen in both a frontal view and in profile simultaneously within a single work.
As for the last work “Maternity”, isn’t it possible that he had two daughters? And if he did not, couldn’t the other girl have been his niece?
No. Wyspiański had one stepson and three own children: two sons and one daughter, Helena. In all art history books about Wyspiański I am aware of, this piece is unambiguously interpreted as showing Helena in two different poses. Nothing bizarre in that at all.
Interestingly, Wyspiański also painted a double portrait of Eliza Pareńska, a 17-year-old daughter of his friends:
https://www.luelue.pl/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/880×1320/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/m/img007_80x120.jpg
Pareńska, considered a beauty icon in the artistic circles of Cracow, was a model and muse. Here is another portrait of Eliza by Wyspiański:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Eliza_Parenska.jpg
She seems serious and with a face of sadness. Indeed, although very young, she already had numerous romances and affairs, and was alcohol- and morphine-addicted. A touching but true story of the fin-de-siècle times.