Marie Bashkirtseff (Ukrainian, 1858–1884) A Meeting (1884) Oil on canvas, 193 x 177 cm. Musée dOrsay, Paris Born Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva in Gavrontsi near Poltava, to a wealthy noble family, she grew up abroad, traveling with her mother across most of Europe. Educated privately, she studied painting in France at the Académie Julian, one of the few establishments that accepted female students, along with Anna Bilinska-Bohdanowiczowa. The Académie attracted young women from all over Europe and the United States. Another fellow student was Louise Breslau, whom Bashkirtseff viewed as her only rival. Bashkirtseff would go on to produce a remarkable body of work in her short lifetime; her best-known works are the portrait of Paris slum children titled The Meeting (1884; Musée dOrsay, Paris) and In the Studio, (shown here) a portrait of her fellow artists at work. Unfortunately, a large number of Bashkirtseffs works were destroyed by the Nazis during World War II. From the age of 13, Bashkirtseff kept a journal, and it is for this that she is most famous. Her personal account of the struggles of women artists is documented in her published journals, which are a revealing story of the bourgeoisie. Titled I Am the Most Interesting Book of All, her popular diary is still in print today. The diary was cited by an American contemporary, Mary MacLane, whose own shockingly confessional diary drew inspiration from Bashkirtseffs. Her letters, consisting of her correspondence with the writer Guy de Maupassant, were published in 1891. Dying of tuberculosis at the age of 25, Bashkirtseff lived just long enough to become an intellectual powerhouse in Paris in the 1880s. A feminist, in 1881, using the nom de plume Pauline Orrel, she wrote several articles for Hubertine Auclerts feminist newspaper, La Citoyenne. One of her famous quotes is: Let us love dogs, let us love only dogs! Men and cats are unworthy creatures. She died in Paris and is buried in Cimetière de Passy. Her monument is a full-sized artist studio that has been declared a historic monument by the government of France. When A Meeting was exhibited at the 1884 Salon, it was acclaimed by both the public and the press. But this success did not satisfy Marie Bashkirtseff at all, who was outraged that she did not receive a medal. She wrote in her Journal: I am exceedingly indignant [...] because, after all, works that are really rather poor have received prizes and also There is nothing more to be done. I am a worthless creature, humiliated, finished. Confident of her own talent, she denounces what seemed to her to be an injustice, but also expresses a fear: the fear of being forgotten. Marie was then only twenty-five years old, and knew already that she was condemned to die from tuberculosis; she died on 31 October that same year. To be remembered as a great artist - this was one of the obsessions of the young woman who had chosen to become a painter at a time when the Ecole des Beaux-arts was still exclusively for men. Marie Bashkirtseff here slips into the Naturalist vein of Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884), an artist whom she admired, but she transposes the themes of her mentor into an urban setting, as did their contemporary Fernand Pelez (1848-1913). She renders every detail of what appears to be a genre scene. Six young boys, their expressions and attitudes captured with precision, stand in a circle around an object that is difficult to identify, but which is certainly the reason behind their discussion. Their well-worn clothes indicate that they are from a working class area -- the wooden fence, the graffiti and the torn posters reinforce this impression -– while their smocks indicate that they are schoolboys: we are in the early 1880s and the reforms enacted by Jules Ferry had established free, secular and compulsory education. The artist does not introduce any social dimension into her work. As a Russian aristocrat herself, she regards these children with detachment, and merely restates a convenient bourgeois stereotype. Nevertheless, it is interesting to speculate on the title of the painting and the presence, on the right, of a little girl walking away. As someone who was committed to the feminist struggles of her time, perhaps Marie Bashkirtseff is here denouncing a misogynist society; the debate remains a male issue and the woman is kept at a distance. (compiled from several sources) * More of this artists work will appear in a special MWW exhibit/gallery devoted to women artists.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 11:54:24 +0000
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