Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 4 October 1877

The day passes quickly when one goes to draw from eight to noon and from one to five. The journey alone eats up nearly an hour and a half, and then I was a little late, so there were only six hours of work.
When I think of the years — whole years I have lost! In anger one is tempted to send everything to the devil... but that would be even worse. Come now, you miserable and abominable girl, be glad that you have at last managed to begin... At my age! Nineteen in a month! I could have begun at thirteen! Five years!
I would have painted historical paintings had I begun five years ago. What I know only hinders me. It has to be done over from the beginning.
I was obliged to begin the full-face head twice before being satisfied.
As for the académie, it did itself, so to speak — Monsieur Julian did not correct a single line. He was not there when I arrived; it was one of the students who told me how to begin. I had never seen a life drawing before.
Everything I had done until now was nothing but a bad joke!
The Portuguese with the long name paid a call. I was at the studio.
At last I am working with artists — real artists who have exhibited at the Salon, whose paintings and portraits are bought, who even give lessons.
Julian is pleased with my start. "By the end of winter you will be able to produce very fine portraits," he told me.
He says that his women students are sometimes as capable as his men students.
I would have worked with the men but they smoke; besides there is no difference. There used to be when women had only the clothed model — but since they do the académie, the nude man, it is all the same.
The studio maid is exactly as they are described in novels. "I have always been with artists," she says, "and I am no longer bourgeois at all — I am an artist."
I am happy, happy.

Notes

In the studio context, académie refers to a life drawing from a nude model — the fundamental academic exercise. ↩