La Douleur de Nausicaa

Overview

La Douleur de Nausicaa ("The Grief of Nausicaa") is Marie's only well-known surviving sculpture: a bronze of a standing woman weeping into her hands, 83 × 23,7 × 23 cm, signed MB 84 on the edge of the base, now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. It stands first among the five sculptures listed in the posthumous catalogue of February 1885; the other four — Femme appuyée, Le Bras, Petit Garçon, Une Femme — are lost. Everything else she modelled between 1878 and 1884 has vanished, so this single figure carries the whole of her second vocation.

Marie had wanted to sculpt for years before she dared. From 1878 she talks about it as the thing that will make her name — «Je sens que ne ferai pas ma gloire en peignant mais bien en sculptant» (086.0037, 10 August 1879) — and in January 1879, at her blackest, the unmade statue is what keeps her from throwing herself off the Arc de Triomphe (083.0374). She actually began to model on 1 December 1879, copying a fragment of the Parthenon frieze (086.0511). Nausicaa is the one ambitious work that came out of that beginning.

Description

Marie's own description, written the day she made the first sketch, is the best one there is: «Ma figure est une femme debout qui pleure la tête dans ses mains. Vous savez ce mouvement d'épaules quand on pleure.» (098.0422) — a woman standing, weeping with her head in her hands, and that particular movement of the shoulders. The grief is carried by the back and shoulders rather than by a face, which is hidden; the figure is legible only as posture.

The mythological title came afterwards. The figure was first conceived as one of the mourning women in her projected history painting Les Saintes Femmes, then detached from it and re-read as Nausicaa, the Phaeacian princess of the Odyssey who watches Odysseus sail away. Marie retells the parting on the shore at length in her entry of 22 March 1883 (098.0551–0554), and that passage is the interpretive core of the work: the weeping is not bereavement but a woman left standing on a beach while the man goes on to his own story. Her aside there about Penelope — she would gladly strangle her, after Ouida — belongs to the same argument.

A note on scale. The diary describes a large armature — «la grande machine», built full-size by two praticiens from her clay maquette, needing an iron frame fixed by a man sent by the sculptor Carriès, and at one point remade because a workman «l'a faite trop grande» (100.0124, 102.0129). The surviving bronze at the Orsay is 83 cm high. How the museum's statuette relates to the large plaster she was fighting with in 1883–84 — reduction, model, or a separate resolution of the same figure — is not established by any source consulted here, and this entry does not assert it.

No free image exists. There is nothing on Wikimedia Commons for this sculpture — a conspicuous gap, since it is the only one of her sculptures anyone can still see. One CC BY photograph by the Commons user Sailko, of an Orsay decorative-arts room (the Dampt panelling from the Hôtel de Béarn), claims in its filename to include a Bashkirtseff sculpture of 1884, but the file page itself does not confirm it and this project has not verified the identification. A reproduction request to the Musée d'Orsay is the obvious way to close the gap.

Making of the Work

The statue is begun on 27 February 1883, the same week she finishes Jean et Jacques, and in the same breath as one of her most quoted lines: «j'ai fait l'esquisse de ma statue… Je suis née sculpteur, j'aime la forme à l'adoration» (098.0420). Within a month two praticiens have built the full-scale armature (098.0549); by 28 March she is pleased with the movement — «désolé» — and that same night the whole thing falls down and has to be rebuilt (098.0608).

Through the summer of 1883 she works en ronde-bosse on the advice of the sculptor Saint-Marceaux (100.0008), who functions here as her model of ambition much as Bastien-Lepage does in painting. By 30 August she rates the sculpture at least as highly as her painting: «ma sculpture actuelle vaut ma peinture si elle ne lui est pas supérieure» (101.0299). Then in December the confidence collapses — «ma Nausicaa ne signifie rien, on ne comprend pas qu'elle pleure» (102.0077) — and is restored six days later when Julian is summoned and raves: «exquis, charmant, très bien, empoignant… Admirablement bien construit» (102.0083). Tony Robert-Fleury, two days after that, is cooler but satisfied (102.0085).

The last winter is a running fight over models — she reckons she has used twenty-three where fifteen would do — until she finds the right body in February 1884: «J'ai trouvé une Nausicaa. Un peu grêle mais charmante, seize ans, des formes très pures. Je suis enchantée mais aurai-je le temps.» (103.0318). She did not. On 14 March 1884 she gives up on submitting it: «Ce ne sera pas fini, je n'enverrai donc que le Meeting» (103.0487). Her last recorded plan for it, on 5 April 1884, is to take up the statue seriously in the mornings and paint a nude study in the afternoons (103.0674). She died on 31 October 1884. The bronze that survives is signed 84.

References in Diary

The long prehistory, before this particular figure: 1878-05-18 (080.0189), 1878-05-27 (080.0352, 080.0354) and 1878-10-12 (082.0497) — the wish to sculpt, and Julian's plan to interest Paul Dubois in her; 1878-10-26 (083.0047, 083.0051, 083.0054) and 1878-10-30 (083.0084) — Robert-Fleury's coaching; 1879-01-06 (083.0374) — the statue as the reason not to die; 1879-03-08 (084.0318) — a first attempt at modelling; 1879-08-10 (086.0037–0038) — sculpture as the road to glory; 1879-10-21 (086.0344) — no room at home for it; 1879-12-01 (086.0511) — «C'est d'aujourd'hui que je commence la sculpture».

The work itself:
- 1883-02-27 (098.0420, 098.0422) — first mention; the sketch, and the description of the weeping woman
- 1883-03-22 (098.0549) — the full-size armature built by two praticiens
- 1883-03-22 (098.0551–0554) — the Nausicaa identification and the parting on the shore
- 1883-03-28 (098.0608) — pleased with the movement; the figure collapses overnight
- 1883-06-05 (100.0008) — a model engaged for ronde-bosse work, on Saint-Marceaux's instructions
- 1883-06-22 (100.0029) — the verdict that she should send it to the next Salon
- 1883-08-03 (100.0124) — the iron armature of «la grande machine», fixed by a man sent by Carriès
- 1883-08-27 evening (101.0270) — the wager: the statue, the gamins and the Saintes femmes at one Salon, and a thousand francs to the poor
- 1883-08-30 (101.0299) — the sculpture worth as much as the painting, or more
- 1883-12-16 (102.0077) — «ma Nausicaa ne signifie rien»
- 1883-12-22 (102.0083) — Julian's rave; 1883-12-24 (102.0085) — Tony cooler
- 1884-01-08 (102.0129) — the workman builds it too large; everything to redo
- Model trouble: 1883-11-26 (102.0057), 1883-12-26 (102.0087, Irma posing), 1884-01-27 (103.0138), 1884-02-18 (103.0318) — «J'ai trouvé une Nausicaa»
- 1884-03-14 (103.0487) — abandoned for the Salon; only Un meeting goes
- 1884-04-05 (103.0674) — the last plan for it

Related Entries

- #Sculpture — the medium
- #Les_Saintes_Femmes — the painting the figure was detached from
- #Salon — the exhibition she raced for and missed
- #Art_Practice — her working life as a whole
- #Saint_Marceaux — the sculptor whose advice shaped it
- #Rodolphe_Julian and #Tony_Robert-Fleury — her two judges

Sources

- Musée d'Orsay — Douleur de Nausicaa (dimensions, inscription, bronze)
- AWARE — Marie Bashkirtseff (published with the musée d'Orsay)
- Catalogue des œuvres de Mlle Bashkirtseff, Union des Femmes Peintres & Sculpteurs, preface by François Coppée, Paris: Ludovic Baschet, 9 February 1885 — sculptures nos. 1–5. Gallica ark:/12148/bpt6k131932r
- The diary itself, carnets 080–086 (the approach to sculpture) and 098–103 (this work)