A modest pencil drawing believed to be the first self-portrait of Stanisław Wyspiański was executed by the artist on 17 February 1890. This image presents a likeness of a boy, fifteen-year-old at most, which stands in jarring contrast to the actual age of Wyspiański who turned 21 in January 1890. The doubts as to the traditional identification of the sitter are further supported by a comparison of the drawing with two photographs of Wyspiański executed barely half a year earlier than the drawing and his two self-portraits drawn six months later. All of these portrayals represent a mature man with facial hair, whose features strikingly differ from the portrait of the youth in the drawing under discussion. This identification is owed to Antoni Waśkowski (1885–1966) who, however, could not have remembered the looks of the artist in 1890. When he published the little portrait executed in February 1890, he captioned it “Stanisław Wyspiański aged 18”, although he must have known that Wyspiański had been much older at that time. Waśkowski’s status as Wyspiański’s cousin resulted in the fact that for the last 90 years nobody has questioned the inconsistency of his guess, nor has anybody suggested a different identification of the person portrayed in the drawing, either. And there is every reason to suppose that “Wyspiański’s earliest self-portrait” is in fact the only currently known likeness of Kazimierz Brudzewski (1874–1912), Wyspiański’s school-fellow. Evidence of their friendship and of Wyspiański’s high regard for Brudzewski can be found in the painter’s correspondence from the years 1890–1905. Brudzewski’s suicide in 1912 and the disappearance of important witnesses to Wyspiański’s early youth contributed to the fact that there was no one in 1934 to rectify Waśkowski’s erroneous identification of the sitter in the modest pencil drawing. However, this seemingly innocent error has persisted firmly for a very long time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]