Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 18 September 1882

Soutzo seems afraid of me; he keeps, besides, a reserve and tact I had not known in him before.
My poor model being ill, I was able to return around five o'clock and found Tony looking for his background; we talked again about open-air painting... If you knew what continual suffering those efforts to hear are!! I do everything I used to seek out; I dread finding myself with people... It is atrocious.
But in the end I believe this very dull painter who has the honour of directing my artistic conscience will be converted by me and will paint a picture in the open air.
Besides, he says he has nothing against open-air painting and that one does paint it — we are agreed. It is still possible. In any case the background of the portrait will represent the corner of the library that I intend to make famous.
On entering the studio — no, first the staircase; that is to say, the landing is hung in red and adorned with flowers and plants. One crosses a small anteroom hung in red and decorated with photographs of old-master paintings; already on the landing one sees the Gioconda and Velázquez's portrait of the sculptor. On entering the studio, the large window is to the left; another draped window looking onto the balcony is before you; and opposite is the gallery, the choir — call it what you will. To the right — that is, facing the large (north) window — is the opening into the library, at the far end of which stands the desk, black like all the woodwork; this desk blocks a window hung with embroidered Salamanca cloth and another Oriental fabric with a silky reverse. Between this window-desk and the left window (with one's back to the studio) is the corner I wish to make as pretty as possible: a plant with its base draped, guitars, two shelves topped with red candles; on these shelves stand the books one turns to in sad or idle moments — Balzac, Dumas père, Paul et Virginie, Ruy Blas, Byron, Montaigne, Rabelais, Dante, Ouida's Ariadne, Homer, the Gospel, etc.
The corner is taken by a divan, sheltered from the window by a screen of pale blue embroidered satin draped generously with tassels and pompons.
The rest of the walls are covered with shelves holding books; [Crossed out: the last shelf is] topped with flowers, forming a border for almost the whole room. A pink lamp is fixed above the desk at the corner of the anteroom; I am going to have a large spider painted on the ceiling. A large armchair stands before the desk, another enormous low one; a chest of drawers wanders between the fireplace, which is in the corner opposite the divan.
Other chairs that one will contrive to make picturesque. But above all, no Karaman carpets and no Arab sacks that hold sway in every studio. It is odious.
The studio is not yet arranged, but there is already a large divan under the window and in the corner — one is only comfortable in corners — and to soften the studio's corner as well as that of the library there is a very large palm.
Paintings everywhere, a Japanese screen, thirty-six things, a skeleton named Louise, a stuffed owl above the opening. There will be an organ on the dais.
What else? Good night. What complacency in my self-descriptions!... I have just been reading Balzac! And apropos — I find myself in accord with his de Marsay when I speak of that second self that always remains the impassive spectator of the first.
And to think that he is dead — Balzac — and what might it have been had he lived... One can only know the happiness of loving by loving a man of universal genius... In Balzac one finds everything... I am quite proud to have thought as he did, on more than one occasion.