Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz (1854–1893) was born on 8 December 1854 in Zlatopol, now part of Novomyrhorod in Ukraine, into a Polish family. She began painting and drawing in Warsaw, supporting herself with drawing and music lessons. In 1882 she went to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian, the private art school that offered women a serious artistic training, where she studied under Rodolphe Julian and Tony Robert-Fleury.
Bilińska exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon from 1884 to 1893, with the exception of 1886, and she also took part in the exhibitions of black-and-white work known as Blanc et Noir. Her best-known works include her Self-Portrait of 1887, her portrait of the American sculptor George Grey Barnard in his studio (1890) and Mother’s Happiness (1891). She is regarded as the first Polish woman painter to win international recognition, and her portraits are marked by psychological insight.
She married the Warsaw lawyer Antoni Bohdanowicz and returned to Warsaw, where she died on 8 April 1893 at the age of thirty-eight. In 2021 the National Museum in Warsaw devoted a large monographic exhibition to her.