Les Saintes Femmes

Overview

Les Saintes Femmes — the Marys coming to the empty tomb — is the picture Marie never painted, and the one she wanted most. It was to be a history painting at life scale, made outdoors in Palestine, and it occupied her from May 1880 until the spring of 1884. What exists of it are three items in the posthumous catalogue of 1885: no. 60, Projet du tableau « Les Saintes Femmes » (0,45 × 0,37 m); no. 61, Les Saintes Femmes (Esquisse) (0,40 × 0,45 m); and no. 93, Étude pour le tableau « Les Saintes Femmes » (0,40 × 0,32 m). Nothing else.

Two things are commonly got wrong about it. It is not "her last picture" — that was La Rue, the enormous canvas she was still finishing when she caught the chill that killed her; the 1885 catalogue lists the two quite separately, one as a finished-and-abandoned work and this one as a project with sketches. And its ambition was not religious in the ordinary sense: Marie wanted, in her own words to Tony Robert-Fleury, «rendre la poésie de l'heure, la désolation profonde, épouvantable de ce qui vient de se passer» — to render the poetry of the hour and the appalling desolation of what has just happened (096.0066).

Where the sketches are now is unknown. Russian Wikipedia states that the work was kept in her mausoleum at Passy; this project reports that attribution without endorsing it — no museum record or scholarly source consulted here confirms it.

Description

The composition, in the form it reached by August 1882 (096.0066–0067), was severe: only two figures, at an hour that could not be named — neither day nor night — told as dark silhouettes against both sky and ground, with the tomb cut into rock behind them. Tony Robert-Fleury found the attitudes «profondément senties, poignantes». One of the two women is the Magdalen, whom Marie drew separately through the autumn: «Je dessine ma Madeleine» (096.0166, 096.0284).

The light was the whole problem and the whole point. She wanted the real effect, out of doors, and the effect she wanted lasts about an hour: «l'effet n'est pas le plein jour et le soir ne dure guère qu'une heure» (095.0349), so she could not simply copy from nature as Bastien-Lepage did. Julian wanted the picture built in a Paris studio out of separate outdoor studies; she insisted on making it «sincèrement, dehors, avec l'effet vrai» (095.0189–0190). That quarrel about method is the reason the picture was never begun.

One figure did survive the wreck, in another medium. The weeping woman of La Douleur de Nausicaa began as a figure in this composition before Marie detached her and re-read her as the princess of the Odyssey.

Making of the Work

The ambition predates the subject. In October 1877, in her first weeks at the Académie Julian, she writes: «J'aurais fait des tableaux d'histoire si j'avais commencé il y a cinq ans» (075.0131). The subject itself arrives at dawn on 27 May 1880, after a night at the harp: «mes deux femmes devant le sépulcre. J'ai envie d'aller à Jérusalem et d'y faire ce tableau avec des têtes de là-bas en plein air» (088.0394). That is two and a half years earlier than the usual account allows.

Carnets 095–096 — the summer and autumn of 1882 — are effectively the picture's diary. She prepares it obsessively (095.0252–0259), works out a day-by-day execution schedule, has the stretcher delivered (095.0303), indicates the figure in charcoal and pastel on the big panel (095.0331–0332), draws the second figure (096.0134). «Le tableau! C'est une idée fixe» (095.0346). «Quand je pense à mon tableau, si c'est le soir je ne puis m'endormir» (096.0104). Jerusalem becomes impractical, so Algiers, so as to find the costume on a living body as she had in Spain (095.0285–0286, 095.0348).

Then on 22 September 1882 Tony and Julian, together, decide that painting it in the open air is beyond her present powers and that she should go back to simple studio studies. «Je n'ai seulement pas osé en parler, c'est comme si l'air devenait du plomb» — she did not even dare speak of it, and the air turned to lead (096.0259). «Mes yeux viennent de tomber sur la toile du tableau… Je suis sans force, tout est fini» (096.0269). Six days later she tells Tony she gives it up and he approves — and in the same entry turns around: «Enfin je vais essayer de le faire ce tableau et si c'est raté j'aime mieux rater cela qu'autre chose» (096.0286–0289, 096.0298). By 1 October she believes again that she will make it (096.0303).

She kept believing for another eighteen months. On 28 December 1882, in the entry in which she is told she is consumptive, the picture is what she has left: «L'hiver prochain j'aurai pour expliquer ce voyage le tableau des Saintes femmes» (097.0295). In February 1883, in a moonlit studio, she is so excited by how it is shaping that she is terrified someone will do it first (098.0383). In May 1883 she finally ébauche it, at full size and without a model, the way she believed Bastien-Lepage worked (099.0345, 099.0359). In October 1883 she catches the exact evening sky she needs — a red sky with a crescent moon — and makes an instant pochade, concluding that the picture can only be done «de chic», from invention, since no sky will pose (101.0535–0538).

The last phase is a race against Bastien-Lepage, who was known to be preparing Les Bergers de Bethléem: «Gare les Bergers de Bethléem s'il les fait avant mes Saintes femmes mon rêve le plus cher s'écroule» (103.0026, 103.0214, 103.0244, 103.0379). Her final resolve is dated 9 March 1884: «au mois d'octobre j'irai en Palestine et je ferai mes Saintes femmes…» (103.0464). October 1884 is the month she died. Bastien-Lepage died five weeks after her.

One entry carries her own retrospective judgement, added in the margin of the July 1882 schedule in her own hand: «Il y a entre ce jour et le 5 mai 1883 un pas énorme de franchi… On ne fait pas un tableau pareil, comme cela. Je ne me doutais de rien.» — between that day and 5 May 1883 an enormous step was taken; one does not make a picture like that just like that; I had no idea (095.0255).

References in Diary

The seed, and the conception:
- 1877-10-04 (075.0131) — the history-painting ambition, before any subject
- 1880-05-27 (088.0394) — first mention: the two women before the sepulchre, and Jerusalem
- 1882-01-15 (094.0083) — the «feu sacré» brought back from Spain; other projects in the same breath
- 1882-04-11 (094.0258) — Jerusalem again

The 1882 campaign:
- 1882-05-29 (095.0117–0119) — «un grand tableau pour l'année prochaine»; Julian unmoved
- 1882-06-20 (095.0189–0190) — the esquisse shown to Julian; the quarrel over method
- 1882-07-12 (095.0252, 095.0254), 1882-07-13 (095.0255–0259) — preparation and the execution schedule; the later marginal note at 095.0255
- 1882-07-18 (095.0282, 095.0285–0286) — Tony: «C'est profondément senti»; Algeria instead of Jerusalem
- 1882-07-22 (095.0303) — the stretcher arrives
- 1882-07-25 (095.0331–0332) — the figure indicated in charcoal and pastel on the big panel
- 1882-07-27 (095.0346, 095.0348), 1882-07-29 (095.0349) — the fixed idea; the light problem
- 1882-08-13 (096.0066–0067) — the fullest description of the composition; Tony's verdict
- 1882-08-13 (096.0072) — the daydream of the crowd in front of it
- 1882-08-15 (096.0082) — Mrs Lyod has just painted the same subject in Rome
- 1882-08-19 (096.0104), 1882-08-28 (096.0134), 1882-08-31 (096.0166, 096.0170), 1882-09-14 (096.0229), 1882-09-28 (096.0284) — sleeplessness, the second figure, the Magdalen
- 1882-09-22 (096.0259, 096.0269) — the collapse
- 1882-09-28 (096.0286–0289, 096.0298) and 1882-10-01 (096.0303) — giving it up, and taking it back

The last eighteen months:
- 1882-12-28 (097.0295) — the consumption entry: the picture as the reason for the journey
- 1883-02-22 (098.0383) — the fear that someone else will do it first
- 1883-03-22 (098.0549) — «Les Saintes femmes en peinture… et en sculpture ma grande préoccupation c'est Ariadne»
- 1883-03-30 (098.0620, 098.0623) — Palestine as an argument about her own freedom of movement
- 1883-05-06 (099.0345), 1883-05-10 (099.0359) — the full-size ébauche
- 1883-08-27 evening (101.0270) — the wager: this, the statue and the gamins at one Salon
- 1883-10-02 (101.0488) — southern studies, but a fog picture first
- 1883-10-09 (101.0535, 101.0537, 101.0538) — the red sky with the crescent; the pochade
- 1884-01-15 (103.0026), 1884-02-02 (103.0214), 1884-02-03 (103.0244), 1884-02-25 (103.0379) — the Bergers de Bethléem panic
- 1884-03-09 (103.0464) — the last resolve: Palestine in October

Related Entries

- #La_Douleur_de_Nausicaa — the figure that detached itself from this composition and survived
- #La_Rue — the picture this one is routinely confused with
- #Bastien-Lepage — the rival whose Bergers de Bethléem haunted the last year
- #Rodolphe_Julian, #Tony_Robert-Fleury — who between them stopped it
- #Salon, #Art_Practice, #Religion
- #Kharkiv_Lost_Works — the fate of the œuvre the sketches belonged to

Sources

- Catalogue des œuvres de Mlle Bashkirtseff, Union des Femmes Peintres & Sculpteurs, preface by François Coppée, Paris: Ludovic Baschet, 9 February 1885 — nos. 60, 61 and 93, and the notice signed "Une Amie" that distinguishes this project from La Rue. Gallica ark:/12148/bpt6k131932r
- Russian Wikipedia — Башкирцева, Мария Константиновна — for the Passy mausoleum claim, reported here as an attribution and not as a fact
- The diary itself, carnets 075, 088, 094–096 and 097–103 — by far the richest source on this work