Zofia Romer (1885-1972) Polish, Portrait of Jozef Matecki Oil on Canvas. Matecki was a Polish Army commander who became an American Defense Intelligence Officer after serving his country in World War I and II. He was awarded the Order or Virtuti Medal, Poland's highest military honor, and was the head of the Polish Underground "Union of Armed Struggle" during the occupation. He emigrated to the United States in 1947 and worked for the US government until his death in 1969. Signed bottom left. 

Overall: 29 1/2 X 27 3/4 in. 

Sight: 21 1/2 X 19 3/4 in. 

#3793 . 

Zofia Romer (née Dembowska) was born on February 16th, 1885 in Dorpat, (now Tartu) Estonia. Her parents were part of the Polish-Lithuanian upper class, with her father a physician and her mother an avid supporter of the local arts and culture. She grew up studying under various painters that she was introduced to through them. In Lithuania she studied painting first under Ivan Trutnev in Vilnius and subsequently under Roth and Shimon Holoszy in Kraków, Poland and Munich, Germany. In 1903 she traveled to Paris to continue her studies with the well-known portrait painter Jacques-Émile Blanche and the historical painter Luc-Olivier Merson. A year later she returned to Kraków to complete her formal artistic education with Józef Siedlecki at the Baraniecki Museum. She was considered very attractive and a free spirit by the many male artists she encountered, and was romantically linked with Bronisław Malinowski and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz at the same time. Her soulful and modernist realism separated her from much of the growing abstraction and expressionism, and she was considered revolutionary for her stance on women's issues and their place in the arts, both in Europe and abroad. In 1911 she married Eugeniusz Romer, a wealthy and influential Polish landowner in Lithuania. This helped her to play a significant role in preserving the artistic heritage of Lithuania during the difficulties of the early 20th Century. Throughout her  prolific artistic career spanning almost 70 years and encompassing a variety of media she produced about 5,000 works, of which at least 1,200 are accounted for in public collections. She had five children: Zofia, Roch Edward, Eugenia, Andrzej Tadeusz, and Hela. Her youngest son Andrzej devoted his later life to preserving his mother's legacy, cataloging her artistic achievements and publishing the memoirs of both of his parents. From 1943 onward she earned her living as a portrait painter as a result of her displacement from her home during World War II. In the second half of her life she lived and created in such diverse places as Moscow, Tehran, Cairo, London, and throughout the United States and Canada, where she died in Montreal on August 23rd, 1972. Her work can still be seen in many museums in Europe including the state museums of Kaunas, Šiauliai, Telšiai, Kelmė, and Vilnius, and the National Museum in Warsaw.