Both parents were descended from the Polish nobility (szlachta) and her father had substantial estates centred on the village of Wszeliwy, near Sochaczew, in the Masovian Voivodeship, Poland.

The family had a long history of patriotic activism, her father having fought with Lajos Kossuth and Józef Bem in the late 1840s.

Stanisława trained as an artist on the Women's course run by Wiesołowski in Warsaw and exhibited at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art 1895-97, prior to enrolling at the Académie Julian in Paris, in 1896.

She travelled to Poland until the late 1930s and would holiday with her daughter's family at Pléneuf-Val-André in Northern Brittany and at St Nicolas-du-Pelem, further south.

Stanisława de Karłowska died in London in 1952 and is buried in the Bevan family tomb in Cuckfield, Sussex.