At the Seashore

Anna Bilińska (pronounced: [ˈanna biˈliɲska] also known as Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz; 8 December 1854 – 8 April 1893) was a Polish painter, known for her portraits. A representative of realism, she spent a decade of her life in Paris, and is considered the "first internationally known Polish woman artist."

She was born 1854 in Zlatopol (formerly a frontier town of the Russian Empire, today a part of Novomyrhorod, Ukraine) as Anna Bilińska, and spent her childhood there with her father, a Polish physician. Of her background, she joked that she "ha[d] a Cossack's temperament, but a Polish heart" (Polish: ma temperament kozaczy, ale serce polskie). The family then moved to Central Russia, where Anna's first art teachers were Ignacy Jasiński and Michał Elwiro Andriolli, both deported by the Tsarist government to Vyatka for their part in the January Uprising of 1863–1864.

In 1875, Bilińska's mother moved the family to Warsaw, enrolling her of-age children in the conservatoire. Anna was a talented pianist, an activity considered a suitable achievement for a woman of her class and time. But painting, a more suspect pursuit, would become her preference.