Le Parapluie

Overview

Le Parapluie (oil on canvas, 93 × 74 cm) is one of Marie Bashkirtseff's most widely reproduced pictures and the only one of her works that the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg publishes in its online catalogue, inv. Ж-2740, under the Russian title Дождевой зонтик. The museum's own record states that it was received in 1904 from M. S. Bashkirtseva, the artist's mother -- which is the hard evidence that the often-cited donation of 141 works "in 1908" was not the museum's only accession of her work.

The picture is conventionally dated 1883, and the 1885 posthumous catalogue lists it as no. 36 at 0,90 × 0,75 m -- a close match to the museum's measurements. The diary, however, places its beginning firmly in August 1882, painted out of doors in the rain at the family's new house in the rue Ampère. Either the conventional date records a later finishing or reworking, or it is simply wrong; the project reports both and asserts neither.

Description

A ragged girl stands in the rain under an open umbrella, an old black skirt pulled up over her head and shoulders in place of a shawl, looking straight out at the viewer. Marie's own description, written the day she began it, is exact: "Une petite fille qui a mis sa vieille jupe noire sur ses épaules et qui tient un parapluie ouvert. Je travaille dehors et il pleut presque tous les jours" (096.0155). The wet grey light and the child's steady, unsentimental stare are the whole picture; it is naturalism at its plainest, and it has outlived nearly everything else she painted in popularity.

Making of the Work

It was painted outdoors in bad weather, with a child model who would not hold still. The diary of 30 August 1882 records the interruptions in sequence -- the upholsterer, a downpour, "c'est la petite qui ne pose pas du tout", a visit from Félix -- and her own summary of the working method it forced on her: "Je commence, je lâche, je recommence" (096.0159, 096.0162). Painting in the rain was not an affectation: Marie had by then committed herself to plein-air naturalism, and she was already ill. On 14 September Rodolphe Julian went through the canvases she brought back to Paris and was pleased with them -- "Et puis la petite avec le parapluie" (096.0228).

References in Diary

- First mention: 1882-08-29 (096.0155) -- "Qu'est-ce que je fais? Une petite fille qui a mis sa vieille jupe noire sur ses épaules et qui tient un parapluie ouvert. Je travaille dehors et il pleut presque tous les jours."
- 1882-08-30 (096.0159, 096.0162) -- the interruptions, the model who will not pose, "Je commence, je lâche, je recommence"
- 1882-09-14 (096.0228) -- Julian's approval of the summer's canvases: "Et puis la petite avec le parapluie"

The diary trail is short: unlike Un meeting or La Rue, this small, quickly made picture never became a campaign, and Marie seems not to have thought it important. Its later fame is entirely posthumous.

Related Entries

- #Art_practice -- Marie's work as an artist, and what became of it
- #Rodolphe_Julian -- who judged the summer's work
- #Un_meeting -- the street children of two years later
- #La_Parisienne -- the head painted the month before

Sources

- State Russian Museum, inv. Ж-2740, Дождевой зонтик -- 93 × 74 cm; «Пост. в 1904 г. от М. С. Башкирцевой»
- Catalogue des œuvres de Mlle Bashkirtseff, Union des Femmes Peintres & Sculpteurs, Paris: Ludovic Baschet, 9 February 1885, no. 36 (0,90 × 0,75 m) -- Gallica ark:/12148/bpt6k131932r
- Image: Wikimedia Commons, Der Regenschirm, public domain
- All diary quotations from the French originals in `/content/_original/`