Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 18 March 1881

I have finished the canvas, apart from a few touch-ups.
Julian finds it has improved enormously in the past week — that it is very good now. Tony did not notice the change at the centre; the three main figures, though in the background, have been repainted and altered, and others too; and the hands.
I myself know it is better now; we shall see what Tony says tomorrow.
There are in all sixteen figures and the skeleton — making seventeen.

Saturday, 19 March 1881

Well — I am not pleased. Tony finds, as on other occasions, several passages good — but the whole does not earn me compliments; he explains at length what needs to be done and gives a few brushstrokes that I shall remove afterwards. As for Amélie, she is not submitting her canvas — it is unfinished and ugly.
At half past four Julian comes, and there is a relaxation! We talk. I had begun at a quarter to eight; I was exhausted — tired above all from not having received a "very good" from Tony. My God, I know it myself: it is lively and animated, but the gaps in knowledge are enormous.
Julian exclaims that he is furious at having given me this stunning subject for my first canvas.
"Ah! If only it were your second!"
"Ah, yes."
"Well then, Monsieur — let us keep it for next year!"
At that he looked at me with eyes shining with the hope of finding me worthy and proud and capable of renouncing the vain satisfaction of exhibiting something incomplete and mediocre.
He would be delighted if I withdrew it — so should I — but the others? Friends? They would say that what I had done was found too poor by the professors, that I proved incapable of a canvas — in short, that I was rejected by the Salon.
The question: have I done everything I could? Except for a few small things — yes, certainly; but I found myself faced with things utterly unknown to me, things I had not suspected. In any case I have learned a great deal. Julian finds I have made a great effort, that it is not bad, that it is lively — but enough to tear one's hair when one thinks of what it could have been. Ah, I wish the canvas were destroyed so as not to be forced to exhibit it! For I am forced to by a stupid vanity that is punished in advance by the very thing I dread: the public's indifference and the mockery of the men downstairs — not exactly mockery, but they will say: "Well, she is not strong — the strongest of your women."
Ah, Lord! It was to be foreseen — Julian ought to have known!
But he says it is because I overworked the canvas — that if I had painted as I started out, it would have been good! And there is the academic study of the model — a little ten-year-old boy — no, if I had done that as a weekly study I would have scraped it out, so banal is it, and above all so commonplace in drawing, without character, and absolutely unworthy of me: it is the worst part of the canvas.
Ah, it is disagreeable — but what is to be done? Saint-Amand asks me for all the details and is preparing a proper launch in Le Sport and in the "Carnet d'un mondain" signed Etincelle, in Le Figaro, written by Mme de Peyronney (the Vicomtesse de Létorières), inspired by Saint-Amand for most of the society items.
It is my fault — I have been working for three years; it is the fault of that rascal Julian, who should have foreseen that I was not up to it... and that creature who cries: "Ah, if only you had done it! Ah, if only you had done it a year from now!"

Notes

The "Carnet d'un mondain" was a popular society gossip column in Le Figaro published under the pen name "Etincelle" (Spark). Mme de Peyronney — the Vicomtesse de Létorières — was the writer, guided by Saint-Amand who fed her items about Marie. ↩