EN
Anna Bilińska (1857-1893), an outstanding painter active in Paris in the late nineteenth century who focused first of all on portrait painting has sunk into oblivion. The oblivion of her and her oeuvre may result from the image of the artist created at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an extremely talented promising artist whose premature death stopped her from creating some valuable works. Bilińska was therefore considered an unfulfilled artist and therefore all the works she executed lost their importance. They were perceived as merely some practice anticipating her ‘true’ works. The symbol of the artist’s unfulfilled career has been found in the unfinished Self-Portrait from 1892 regarded to be her last painting before she was due to enter the path of great art.