Anna Times Two

Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz "Self-Portrait with Apron and Brushes" 1887
National Museum, Krakow

You can sometimes find figurative painter Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz (1857–1893) claimed as Ukranian, sometimes as Polish, and even occasionally as Russian. The reason for this vagueness is probably that Bilińska-Bohdanowicz was born in the Ukraine to a Polish father (I could not discover the nationality of her mother) spent some of her youth in Russia, and then studied art and lived as a young adult in Poland. She also spent a few years in France, where she studied at the Académie Julian. While in Paris she met her future husband, a Polish medical doctor. The couple married in 1892 and then moved to Warsaw. Unfortunately, the artist died a year later, reportedly of a heart attack. 

In comparison with Marie Bashkirtseff (1858-1884) whose almost exact contemporary she was, Bilińska-Bohdanowicz appeared to be a somewhat slower-maturing artist. Although she died in her thirties rather than her twenties as Bashkirtseff did, she left us with much less information about herself and a smaller body of mature work. These two evocative self-portraits, the last one left unfinished by her death, are the pieces she left behind that most clearly hint at her individual genius, and the skill and power she was accruing. 

Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz "Self-Portrait" 1892
National Museum, Warsaw