Bilińska used oil paints, pastels and watercolours to create portraits, still lifes, genre scenes and landscapes in the style of European realism. The artist brilliantly mastered the basics of the painting technique, evidenced by her academic studies of models, which strike the viewer with their synthetic approach to the form and with their casual technique of painting. Of course, the artist also simultaneously continued the clear contour style, exemplified by her Male Nude Study (1885), Study for a Male Nude (ca. 1884-85) and Boy Nude (ca. 1884-85). Sketches for the historical and biblical compositions which Bilińska created in her youth have similar qualities but also display a bold expression of colour juxtaposition, as exemplified by Joseph Interprets Dreams (1883) and Inquisition (1884). Bilińska’s mature works consist predominantly of portraits and portrait studies of various ethnic types which were fashionable at that time. These pieces merge the refined simplicity of realism with an academic discipline of the painting technique, such as Head of a Serb (ca. 1884) or Old Man with a Book (ca. 1890s).
Her father was a doctor, who ran his practice in Kiev and other towns in the Kiev region. Her musical and artistic talents manifested themselves already in her childhood. During her stay in Wiatka in the years 1869-71 she received her first drawing lessons from Michał Elwiro Andriolli. After her family moved to Warsaw she studied at the music conservatory from 1875 for two years before enrolling in a private painting school led by Wojciech Gerson. Already in 1876 she began exhibiting her works at the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (Zachęta). Her early pieces earned her critical acclaim, also Gerson valued the young painter’s talents.
At the beginning of 1882 she accompanied her ill friend Klementyna Krassowska on a journey through Munich, Salzburg, Vienna and northern Italy. She spent a lot of time sightseeing and visiting museums and galleries of contemporary art. In Munich she became interested in Arnold Böcklin’s paintings and dropped by the studios of Polish artists Wandalin Strzałecki, Aleksander Świeszewski and Józef Brandt. In the Old Pinakothek she admired the works of Rembrandt, Rubens and Murill. At the Academy in Vienna she copied the casts of Michelangelo’s, Sansovin’s and Donatello’s sculptures. There she met Wojciech Grabowski, with whom she became emotionally involved.
In November 1882 she travelled to Paris and began her studies at the Académie Julian. She studied at the women’s workshop led by Rodolphe Juliane and Tony Robert-Fleury. In 1883 she enrolled in Olivier Merson’s class. The professors valued her school work and by 1883 she won the second prize in a competition organised by the Académie Julian. A year later she debuted at the Parisian Salon with a woman’s portrait and in 1885 she received an honourable mention for a charcoal drawing presented at the Noir et Blanc exhibition. In Paris she befriended Józef Chełmoński and Władysław Mickiewicz’s family amongst others, but she didn't have much money and her living conditions were poor in spite of the fact that she supported herself teaching music and drawing. On occasion she would find clients for her paintings, but they did not fetch much at the time. The death of her father in 1884 left her without a livelihood. It was then that Rodolphe Julian helped the young artist by exempting her from study fees and by hiring her as the leader of one of his workshops. In the years 1883-1886 Bilińska visited Poland a few times. She went to the Ukraine to see the Krassowski family and Grabowski, who stayed in Lviv. She often spent summer months in the countryside near Paris or Lyon. She also traveled to Brittany, where she visited Oleron, Benodet and Beg-Meil amongst others.
In the autumn of 1884 Klementyna Krassowska passed away (in her will she secured her friend financially) and in June 1885 also Bilińska’s fiancé Wojciech Grabowski passed away. The artist slumped into depression and repaired to Pourville-les Bains in Normandy, where at the turn of 1885 and 1886 she spent a few months under the care of her friend, the painter Maria Gażycz. In 1892 in Paris she married Antoni Bohdanowicz, who was a doctor. They both returned to Warsaw the same year. Bilińska intended to open a painting school for women in the capitol of Poland, which would have mimicked the practices of the Parisian academies. However the project was stopped short when the artist fell ill with a heart condition, which led to her untimely death.
Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz, Male Partial-nude, 1885, oil and goache on canvas, 97 x 67 cm, courtesy of the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw Her most well-known paintings, such as Lady with Binoculars (1884) or Portrait of a Young Woman with a Rose - Portrait of Mlle R. (1892) are marked by an exquisite elegance, an unpretentious womanly charm and a discrete restraint in the psychological characterisations. Both display a fine precision of drawing, a clear definition of the form, a sophistication of the colour scheme, employing subtly differentiated tones and varied value intensities. The two paintings present a clear mastery of depicting the textures of fabrics and a perfection of the painting. They also fall within the realist style thanks to the natural ease of composition and above all the artist’s ability to grasp the specific state of mind and the psychological mood of the models, who are portrayed simply, without any idealisation. Her male nudes and partial nudes of that same period were also very well received, characterised by a similar sensibility for texture, colour and form.
Bilińska’s Self-Portrait, which won the gold medal at the Salon in 1887 and the silver medal at the World’s fair in Paris in 1889 (at that time the artist also gained the right to exhibit hors concours), brought her international fame, which was strengthened by enthusiastic reviews in the world press. In those days she was chiefly a highly recognized and successful portrait painter. In 1890 she won the gold medal at the exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. In 1891 she won another gold medal, this time at the international art exhibition in Berlin. She participated in the Parisian Salons many times and also took part in presentations organized at the Georges Petit Gallery and at the Desaix Gallery in Champs de Mars. She also exhibited her works in Munich (1882, 1890, 1892), Grenoble, Roanne, London (1888) and in the USA. In Poland her works were presented in the Warsaw Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (from 1876), in Aleksander Krywult’s Salon (1880, 1890, also posthumously: 1894, 1896, 1900) and also in the Society of the Friends of Fine Arts in Kraków (1883-1895). Anna Bilińska was the first Polish artist to gain recognition in Paris, which was Europe’s most important artistic center in the second half of the 19th century. She was extremely talented and thanks to her remarkable determination and consciousness of her artistic vocation she became the first Polish woman to obtain a professional, academic education. The artist’s oeuvre isn’t large and sadly only a few of her works remain in Polish collections. Undoubtedly a vast portion of her painting output, including many portraits, is owned by private collectors from abroad and is therefore inaccessible to the public.
The two self-portraits of the artist are very personal and sincere in their straightforwardness and at the same time almost ascetic in a purely painting sense. Examples include her Self-Portrait (1887), Self-Portrait (1892), which was unfinished, commissioned by Ignacy Korwin-Milewski for the gallery of self-portraits of Polish painters. The qualities of the two works - the natural ease of the pose, a modesty of the attire, the attributes of the painter’s profession held in the hands and finally the open, bold look on the author’s face, which conveys firmness and strength of character - clearly express the artist's intention to present herself as an artist, who knows her worth, and as a woman, who has freed herself from the restrictions of the the era's conventions.
