Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 29 November 1882

The Princess, Bojidar and Tchernisky dined here yesterday. I am found to have grown fat. Saint-Agathe and Adeline come before dinner.
Julian says I appear very calm, that I hold myself in the way singers place their voice. He told Bojidar that I do nothing but pretend to work. This evening Rosalie, undressing me, remarked that it seems to her I am not working seriously this week.
I tore the dress in two.
It comes from the maid or from Julian — because instead of painting the head of the model, who is stupid and expressionless, I paint a head that is alive and interesting.
Amélie is on the right path, that one — for ten years she has been coming to the studio and doing plaster casts every six months to start afresh. There is not a single interesting student except Filippini, and even that is questionable. It is an unparalleled crowd of nonentities.

Notes

The Princess: Princess Cantacuzène, a frequent presence in the Bashkirtseff social circle, of Russian–Romanian aristocratic background. ↩
Filippini: a fellow student at the Académie Julian whose name appears occasionally in the diary; evidently one of the few Marie considered genuinely talented. ↩