Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 14 February 1881

This morning Julian received the letter whose draft is here [missing], accompanied by an old red tulip. As we have often laughed together about Louise Michel, it makes a great impression.
Brisbane’s head (Alice) is painted in two hours, and Julian tells me to leave it. And other times one spends eight days producing something wretched... Part of the apron and the bodice are also painted.
The perspectivist comes and preaches at me for twenty-five minutes the necessity of submitting to his infallible rules. Tony then?... and I? This man cannot be wrong, since they are fixed rules — but Tony, but I?
I know nothing about it. Let us not go deeper, so as not to tire ourselves at the moment when we need great freedom of mind to produce the masterpiece in peace. But I opt for the mathematician.

Notes

Louise Michel (1830–1905): French anarchist and feminist revolutionary, “the Red Virgin of Montmartre,” prominent in the Paris Commune (1871). By 1881 she was a celebrity of the radical left. Marie and Julian apparently joked about her dramatic persona — hence the red tulip sent with the letter as a knowing reference. ↩
Marie’s coinage: perspecteur [sic] (see 12 February). ↩