"Self-Portrait in a White Dress," Jacek Malczewski, 1914.

Polish painter Malczewski (1854-1929) was technically a Symbolist painter, but he was also one of the central figures of the Young Poland movement, a patriotic modernist movement in art, literature, and music that rejected older forms and sought to create a new, modern identity for the country's aesthetic character.

The son of a noted Polish patriot and activist, he was educated by noted novelist Adolf Dygasiński and learned art under one of the best art teachers in Poland, Leon Piccard.

He did many self-portraits, but why he did this one, and what he meant by it, are unknown. He wears a woman's blouse with a tightly cinched waist and a flamboyant beret. Some take a wink-wink-nudge-nudge attitude to this, but he was a married man with a brood of children. Given that he had aesthetic leanings, with an art-for-art's-sake outlook, it's likely he just thought it was an interesting outfit. Perhaps it's something of a joke; while in female clothing, his pose is more associated with old paintings of knights on horseback.

From the National Museum in Krakow.

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Menomale che c'è sempre uno che canta
E la tristezza ce la fa passare.

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