Marie Bashkirtseff

(Ukraine, 23/11/1858 - 31/10/1884)

Self-Portrait with Palette (1880)

“What am I?... Nothing!” Marie Bashkirtseff’s asked to her diary at just fifteen years old and declared, “What do I want to be? Everything!”. As one of the earliest and loudest voices to demand visibility in the male-dominated art world, Bashkirtseff’s life and career was short but permeated with the relentless ambition and creative drive of true artistic genius.

Born in 1858 in the Poltava region of what is now Ukraine, Bashkirtseff’s refined education is what can be expected from her Russian aristocracy upbringing, taking classes in dance, music and, of course, drawing.

At twelve years old, her parents separated and she moved West with her mother and grandmother, eventually settling in Nice in 1870 where she continued drawing lessons and, later, while taking lessons in Rome, discovered a passion for painting.

Moving to Paris in 1877, she enrolled at the Académie Julian and quickly excelled. Much like her Realism contemporaries, Bashkirtseff painted everyday scenes of the working-class, children in the street and domestic moments that she rendered with a powerful mix of technical skill and emotional depth.

In 1881, she was accepted into the Paris Salon for the first time, exhibiting her large painting In the Studio which stands as a bold, visual statement about women’s changing presence in the art world, especially when thought of in relation to Johan Zoffany’s depiction of the Royal Academy studio.

That same year she attempted to partake in academy’s honourary courses but was rejected because the courses were closed to women. In response, she contributed to the feminist newspaper La Citoyenne under the pseudonym Pauline Orrel and demand that women have complete access to fine arts schools.

At this time, her Realism aesthetics came to be espoused by her humanist and social views, and she began to move away from nature scenes in favour of depicting the urban street scenes for which she is known, such as A Meeting which earned her accolades at the 1884 Salon.

However, just as she began to find her footing, the tuberculosis she had struggled with since childhood began to rapidly deteriorate her health and body, although, as she became increasingly aware of her impending death, her creative output only intensified. She painted feverishly and her final works reflect both the maturity of her vision and a poignant awareness of her fading life. On October 31, 1884, she passed away at just twenty-five years old.

Determined that she be remembered, she began writing in a diary at thirteen years old with the intention that it would one day be published. She details everything from her artistic ambitions and romantic frustrations to her existential musings and social critiques. But unlike the polished letters and memoirs of her male contemporaries, Bashkirtseff’s diary is entirely unfiltered, vividly expressing her frustrations with the artistic institution and her longing to be freed from the confines of 19th century social expectation pressed upon her gender, writing in 1877 “What I long for is the freedom of going about alone, of coming and going, of sitting on the seats in the Tuileries, and especially the luxury of stopping and looking at the artistic shops, of entering the churches and museums, of walking about the old streets at night; that’s what I look for; and that’s the freedom without which one can’t become a real artist”.

Image: Marie Bashkirtseff, Self-Portrait with Palette (1880). Oil on canvas, 114 x 95.2 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret, France.