Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 24 December 1882

Saint-Amand and Géry come to prevent me from working.

Saint Amand, Gery viennent m'empecher de travailler.

The portrait being finished, I send him this morning four thousand francs in an envelope and a basket of flowers from Vaillant,1 the incomparable artist in flowers. An immense, ravishing basket.

Le portrait etant fini, je lui envoie ce matin quatre mille francs dans une enveloppe et une corbeille de fleurs de chez Vaillant, l'incomparable artiste en fleurs. Mais une corbeille immense, ravissante.

He was positively overcome, Rosalie says; I wager that this artist who came to age in this "modern" century — this artist of 1835 — has never received anything like it. He did not even give Rosalie five francs. Although his portrait is bourgeois, Orleanist,2 etc., etc., I treated him graciously — one does this for oneself, and besides it avoids having to write a tiresome letter that would otherwise have to accompany the bank notes.

Il a ete positivement saisi a ce que dit Rosalie; je parie que cet artiste venu vieux dans ce siecle "moderne", cet artiste de 1835 n'a jamais rien recu de pareil. Il n'a seulement pas donne cinq francs a Rosalie. Quoique son portrait soit bourgeois, orleaniste etc. etc. je l'ai traite gentiment, on fait cela pour soi et puis ca evite une lettre embetante a ecrire qui devrait accompagner les billets de banque.

Ah! it is not Bastien who would make such a portrait. I had imagined Tony would do it draped, Grecian, fine, pure, with well-drawn forms. And instead he shows me as a young lady in an armchair with a fan in her hand.

Ah ! ce n'est pas Bastien qui ferait un tel portrait. Moi je pensais que Tony me le ferait drape, grec, fin, pur avec des formes bien dessinees. Et au lieu de ca il me montre en demoiselle dans un fauteuil, un eventail a la main.

Notes

Vaillant: the most celebrated florist in Paris at the time, known for spectacular arrangements. Sending flowers from Vaillant's was a gesture of the first order. ↩
Orleanist: in French political and aesthetic vocabulary, orléaniste meant belonging to the style and taste of the bourgeois monarchist establishment under Louis-Philippe (1830–48) — respectable, conventional, unimaginative. The worst thing Marie could say about a painting. ↩