Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz

Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz (8 December 1857 – 18 April 1893) was a Polish painter, known for her portraits. A representative of Realism, she spent much of her artistic life in Paris.

Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz
Self-Portrait with Apron and Brushes, 1887
Born
Anna Bilińska

8 December 1857
Zlatopol, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire
Died18 April 1893 (1893-04-19) (aged 35)
Warsaw, Russian Empire
NationalityPolish
EducationAcadémie Julian
Known forPainting
Spouse(s)Antoni Bohdanowicz

Life

She was born Anna Bilińska, the daughter of a Polish physician in the formerly frontier town of Zlatopol in the Russian Empire (today part of Novomyrhorod), where she spent her childhood with her father. Of her background, she joked that she "ha[d] a Cossack's temperament but a Polish heart" (Polish: ma temperament kozaczy, ale serce polskie).[1] Her first art teacher was Michał Elwiro Andriolli (following the January Uprising of 1863–1864, Andriolli was exiled by the Tsarist government to katorga) before she studied music and art in Warsaw, where in 1877 she became a student of the painter Wojciech Gerson. During this time, she began to exhibit her work at Warsaw's Zachęta Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts (Polish Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych).

In early 1882 she accompanied her chronically ill friend Klementyna Krassowska on a journey to Munich, Salzburg, Vienna and northern Italy, before travelling to and settling in Paris where she studied along with Marie Bashkirtseff and British artist Emmeline Deane at the Académie Julian,[2] and where later she also taught. She lived in France until 1892, where she married a medical doctor named Antoni Bohdanowicz and took his name (Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowiczowa). They returned to Warsaw after their marriage, where she intended to open a Parisian-style art school for women, but fell ill with a heart condition and died a year later on 18 April 1893.

Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowiczowa is best known for her portraits, painted with great intuition. Her Self-Portrait with Apron and Brushes (1887) developed a new self-portrait pose by placing the artist in front of a model's backdrop, thus stating that she is her own model.[3] She also painted still lifes, genre scenes and landscapes, and was a representative of realism. Her paintings can be found in the National Museum Warsaw and National Museum Kraków.

Legacy

Bilińska-Bohdanowicz was included in the 2018 exhibit Women in Paris 1850-1900.[4]

Shortly after Bilińska's father died, her portrait, in deep mourning, was painted in 1886 by her friend Emmeline Deane in Paris.[5]

Bilińska's work is not well known, even in her home country, probably due to prejudices of the time about women artists, and her early death. However, the National Museum in Warsaw planned to hold a major exhibition of her work, and Deane's portrait of her, in 2021.[5]

Selected paintings
  • A Negress (Murzynka), 1884
  • At the Seashore, 1886
  • Self-Portrait, 1892
  • A Village Woman with a Child, 1891
  • Unter den Linden Street in Berlin, 1890
  • Cindirella, 1884
  • Muscle Man. Semi-nude male, 1885
  • Old Man with a Book, 1890s

Bibliography
  • Clara Erskine Clement, Women in the Fine Arts from the Seventh Century B.C. to The Twentieth Century A.D., 1904
  • Magdalena Schlender, Die Selbstbildnisse der polnischen Malerin Anna Bilińska (The self-portraits of the Polish painter Anna Bilińska), Hamburg 2005
  • Magdalena Schlender, Anna Bilińska Bohdanowicz, probably 2009.

References
  1. RENATA HIGERSBERGER. PIĘKNA, SKRADZIONA, ODZYSKANA. nimoz.pl
  2. "Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz". Culture.pl.
  3. Frances Borzello, Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraiture, 1998.
  4. Madeline, Laurence (2017). Women artists in Paris, 1850-1900. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300223934.
  5. "The Great British Art Tour: time at last to pay Anna Bilinska proper attention". The Guardian. 28 January 2021. By Katharine Wall, collections manager, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath

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