She was born Anna Bilińska, the daughter of a Polish doctor in the formerly fronteer town of Złotopol in the Russian Empire (once at the border with Poland, now in Ukraine), where she spent her childhood. She lived with her father in Imperial Russia, where her first art teacher was the exiled Michał Elwiro Andriolli, before studying music and art in Warsaw where she became a student of Wojciech Gerson in 1877.
Académie Julian, Royal College of Artist
During this time, she began to exhibit her work at the Zachęta Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts (Polish Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych) in Warsaw. Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowiczowa is best known for her portraits, painted with great intuition. Her Self-Portrait with Apron and Brushes,(1887), which innovated a new self-portrait pose by placing the artist in front of a model"s backdrop, thus stating that she is her own model.
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 KrakóWest
