Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 2 April 1884

I went to Petit's (Exhibition in the rue de Sèze) and stayed there for an hour before Bastien's incomparable canvases. Cazin is good too — but!
Afterwards I go to Tony's — in a very cheerful air, playing the curious visitor: "Well now, Monsieur, how did things go at the jury?" "Very well — when your painting came before them, not one or two of them but a whole group said: 'well now, that's good — a number 2!'"
"Oh! Monsieur — is that possible?" "But yes — believe me, I do not say it to please you; it was so; one voted, and if that day the president had not been a brute and a numbskull you had a number 2. Your painting was found good, received with sympathy — but the president conducted proceedings like a brute..."
"And I have a number 3?" "Yes — but it is due to a kind of misfortune, sheer bad luck, nothing else. You should have had a 2."
"But what do they find to criticise in the painting?" "Nothing."
"What — nothing? It is not bad, then?" "It is good."
"But then?" "Then it is a misfortune, and that is all. And if you found a member of the jury to request that it be placed on the cimaise, it will be there — for it is good."
"But you?" "As for me — I am a member of the committee charged specifically with seeing that the order of numbers is respected. But let one of us request it and believe me, I shall say nothing against it."
I believe you, you dirty old man.
Oh! but that does not surprise me from him. Well... And then toward four o'clock, to Rodolphe's, who laughs a little at Tony's advice and says I may be almost easy, that he will be very surprised if I am not on the cimaise, and that... besides, Tony told me that in his heart and conscience I deserve a 2, and that I have it morally. Morally!!
And that besides it would only be fair...
What I find admirable is these wretched Canroberts who find it natural — and who since the number 3 have estimated my abilities at a third of what they were before. After all, they must resent me for the painting I made for Claire. That will teach me to commit acts of cowardice.
These idiots think the 3 is deserved, because they know nothing about it and believe they have protected me! Good heavens. With their Boulanger and Lefèbvre? But those two are at the studio, and I had them through Julian from the moment I first exhibited.
That will teach me.
And that I should go and petition again. Ah! No! To ask as a favour what is my due! It is too much.
Ah! The damned wretches — now that I have made a painting for them, they drop me. For neither Mme de Luynes nor the Marquise d'Hervey has ever sent anything as good. And moreover people do not know who I am, and think it was she who painted it — for they take me as just another society girl. The maréchale had Claire sit her examinations at the Hôtel de Ville, had her learn to paint, instilled a taste for serious literature, and set her up as a superior young woman. I helped with this image-making — and now. That will teach me.

Thursday, 3 April 1884

I go back to Jacques and he will not pose at all.
Besides, I am quite ill. Oh, my family will bury me — that is almost certain.
Yet there is some sweetness in being ill when one thinks that Bastien is ill too.

Notes

The Galerie Georges Petit (rue de Sèze): one of the most prestigious private galleries in Paris, which hosted the major exhibitions of Bastien-Lepage, Monet, Renoir, and other leading artists of the period. ↩