Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 4 April 1884

For three days I have not come down and have not seen my family. I read and am stupefied. I have Rosalie report that I do not eat and that I am spitting blood. If it is not literally true, it is nearly true.
My aunt says she is on the point of departing — we shall see.
His exhibition is no doubt brilliant — but it is almost all older things: 1. The portrait of Mme Drouet from last year. 2. Another portrait from 1882. 3. A landscape with two laundresses and an apple tree in blossom, also from 1882. 4. His Prix de Rome competition entry (he won only second prize) from 1875 — the Magi and the angel. Then from last summer there is a sketch made at Concarneau: that makes five. The pond at Damvillers — 6. The Wheat or the Harvester — one sees only a small Harvester from behind. An old wretch carrying wood in a forest. That makes 8. The pond at Damvillers, the Harvester, and the wretch are in full sunlight, and when they show me many landscape painters of this quality I shall be very astonished. For a great artist cannot have a speciality.
When Bastien-Lepage wishes to paint a Sistine Chapel, he will do so — whereas the most celebrated academicians, decorators and portrait painters could not. Boulanger, Baudry, Bouguereau, Carolus, Cabanel — each of these gentlemen has a specialty.
But did Michelangelo not also have a genre? Michelangelo was a sculptor and painted only on commission and when already advanced in years. But there are certain small drawings by Michelangelo that prove that had he wished to make a closely studied portrait, he could have done so. Michelangelo...
So seriously I believe that Bastien-Lepage... But I know that I have seen at his studio an Andromeda which, though small, is a nude study such as no one could execute: precision, character, likeness, nobility of form, elegance of movement, delicacy of tone — everything was there. And with an execution that is at once precious and broad... like nature itself — flesh and skin. When he wished to achieve a twilight effect, he produced Le Soir au village, which is a pure masterpiece. That poetic note in the manner of Millet was perhaps transcended... I say "in the manner of Millet" so as to be understood; for Bastien is himself, and if Millet painted evenings and moons there are plenty left for others, thank God. Le Soir au village has a magical effect.
Why did I not buy it! He also showed views of London with the Thames, where one positively sees the water flowing — that heavy, thick water that flows almost in a turning motion. And his small portraits are more beautiful or as beautiful as all the small portraits of the old masters.
The moderns beside him are mere craftsmen. And his life-size portrait of his mother has an execution that does not feel like execution — for it is nature itself, from near or far. As for Joan of Arc — it is an inspiration of genius. He is thirty-five. Raphael died at thirty-seven, having done more. But Raphael, from the age of twelve, was cradled on the knees of duchesses and cardinals who had him work under the great (as he then was) Perugino; and Raphael at fifteen made copies of his master indistinguishable from the originals, and was proclaimed a great artist from the age of fifteen.
And then, his large canvases [blacked out: which us] astonish by the time they represent as well as by their qualities; in those canvases the heavy work was done by pupils, and in several of his paintings in his early period there is of Raphael only the cartoons.
And Bastien, to subsist in Paris, sorted letters at the post office from three to seven in the morning.
He first exhibited in 1869, I believe. Well, he had neither duchesses nor cardinals nor a Perugino — but already in his village he had won every prize for drawing.
I believe it was only at fifteen or sixteen that he came to Paris.
That is even better than I — I who lived always in [blacked out] taking a few lessons in my childhood like every child, then about fifteen lessons of an hour each over three or four years. Then finally, still in that idiotic milieu, I began seriously in November 1877. That gives me six years and some months — but with travel and a serious illness. Well... and where am I? Am I at the level of Bastien in 1874?
That question is an insanity.
Here is a word from Julian that delights me. If I said in company — even in front of artists — what I write about Bastien, they would say I was quite mad.
Some out of conviction, others on principle — and in order not to acknowledge... the superiority of a young man.

Notes

Bastien-Lepage competed twice for the Prix de Rome; on his second attempt in 1875 he won second prize, a considerable honour. The subject was The Annunciation to the Shepherds (not the Magi), though Marie may be recalling the subject loosely. ↩