Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 19 May 1881

Since Tuesday I have been painting the portrait of the daughter of the famous baritone Maurel. She is fourteen and a half and ravishing. It was Villevieille who brought her. Maurel and his wife occupy a fine small townhouse on the rue Lord Byron and give artistic evenings — most interesting ones — attended by a few society women as well. Yesterday Saint-Amand came to the studio with Maurel, and Maurel came back again today.
It appears he is a painter as Ingres was a violinist...
Apropos of music — I charmed the ears of my masters with the mandolin. Julian declares that instrument moves him extraordinarily.

Notes

Victor Maurel (1848–1923): celebrated French baritone, one of the great operatic voices of his generation, later the creator of Verdi's Iago and Falstaff. His townhouse on the rue Lord Byron was a gathering place for Paris artistic society. ↩
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) was famous for his passionate love of the violin — he played it daily but was emphatically not a musician. The phrase violon d'Ingres entered French idiom meaning a hobby or secondary talent cultivated with earnest but limited skill. Marie uses it to gently mock Maurel's amateur painting. ↩