Zak was a well-regarded participant in the Parisian avant-garde, who was nimble enough to assimilate many competing threads – from the group of artists known as the Nabis, to Puvis de Chavannes, to Picasso and the School of Paris – to create a stylized figural approach uniquely his own. This painting is his reply to the Blue Period of Picasso, with its emphasis on marginalized figures, often shown in melancholic states of reverie. The angularity of the woman’s features with its exaggeratedly ‘Greek’ profile became a characteristic type in the artist’s later work.

Zak’s inroads in Paris made him an influential leader of progressive art in his home country of Poland. Sadly, his premature death at the age of 41 from a heart attack brought his flourishing career to an abrupt end.