La Rue

Overview

La Rue is the picture Marie Bashkirtseff was working on when she died. At 2,47 × 3,15 m it was by far the largest canvas she ever attempted -- half again the size of Un meeting -- and it is listed as no. 33 in the catalogue of the posthumous exhibition of February 1885, so the canvas physically existed three months after her death. Its whereabouts since then are unknown, and it is presumed lost. No reproduction of it has been located, and none is included here.

The notice signed "Une Amie" in that 1885 catalogue makes the picture the direct cause of her death: «C'est en terminant son dernier tableau, la Rue, que la pauvre enfant, déjà épuisée par un excès de travail, prit froid et que la maladie eut raison de ce corps fragile» -- it was in finishing La Rue, worn out with overwork, that she caught the chill that killed her. She died of tuberculosis on 31 October 1884, at twenty-five.

Two frequent confusions. La Rue is not Les Saintes Femmes: the 1885 catalogue distinguishes them, and it is La Rue that she was finishing, while Les Saintes Femmes remained the great history picture she never began beyond sketches (catalogue nos. 60, 61, 93). Nor is it either of the two small street pictures in the same catalogue, Coin de Rue (no. 46, 0,40 × 0,32 m) and La Rue Brémontier (no. 70, 0,45 × 0,54 m).

Description

The picture was to be a modern street subject with a crowd of figures: a corner of the outer boulevards of Paris, with the faces of the people who use it. It began as something quite different -- fairground wrestlers -- and the diary preserves the exact moment the subject turned inside out. Hunting for wrestlers to paint, she found she was interested in the street around them: "Il me reste des jongleurs et la rue avec ses physionomies, c'est ça que je voulais n'est-ce pas ?" (105.0106–0107).

Her working principle for it was stated flatly a week later: "rien ne peut égaler la grandeur des sujets au repos" (105.0206) -- nothing equals the grandeur of subjects at rest. The scale was polemical. In the same entry that records her four-hour search for the right corner, she set the picture against the reigning Salon painters, Meissonier, Cabanel and Bouguereau (105.0280–0281): the street, life-size, was to be taken as seriously as history.

Making of the Work

The idea arrived on 4 June 1884, at three in the afternoon, and it arrived as wrestlers: "J'avais justement envie d'un sujet moderne avec beaucoup de monde et du nu, et une toile pas trop énorme. Ça y est... Eh bien mes lutteurs. Des lutteurs forains et du monde tout au tour. Il y aura des torses nus pour montrer que je puis faire du nu. Ivresse !" (104.0530). Within days she was at Montmartre watching them, and already half-converted: "Mon Dieu que c'est donc intéressant la rue !" (104.0578). The canvas was delivered and the wrestlers sketched on it by 24 June (104.0662–0663).

The wrestlers then collapsed as a subject for practical and social reasons: they work indoors and at night -- "je ne veux pas peindre aux lumières et je n'aurais plus l'intérêt des types de la rue" (105.0029); Tony Robert-Fleury told her Falguière had done it eight years before (105.0040); and her family told her that painting wrestlers would be a scandal (105.0155). By mid-July they were abandoned (105.0198–0199) and the street had taken their place.

What follows is the most physically demanding campaign in the diary, carried out by a woman who was dying. She walked more than four hours looking for the corner she would use as her background (105.0278). She was out from five in the morning at La Villette and Les Batignolles with Rosalie, who accosted the passers-by Marie pointed out, to recruit them as models (105.0302). She sketched from inside a closed cab, and by six in the morning had a crowd of twenty standing round it: "je me traîne et je lutte" (105.0535, 105.0548). Émile Bastien-Lepage built her a system of easel, canvas and shade to work in the street (105.0565–0608). She had the corner photographed at seven one morning so that the lines of the pavements would be exact (105.0666) -- a working method more common a century later than in 1884. And she recorded, without self-pity, what it was costing: "Mon tableau à moi est ébauché en couleur. Mais je ne suis pas vaillante. Il faut que je me repose souvent en me couchant et quand je me [relève] la tête me tourne et pendant quelques secondes je n'y vois plus" (105.0523–0524).

Jules Bastien-Lepage, himself already dying, was both the standard and the danger. The finest passage on the subject is hers, on 16 August: "Que le tableau terminé il me dise ce qu'il en pense, oui, j'écouterai avec effroi et des sueurs froides; mais pendant que j'y travaille, c'est ma mort." He had, she wrote, already nearly made her distort the picture, "qui ne s'est pas encore reconstitué malgré mes efforts" (105.0613–0619). In September he joked that if he were not ill he would be accused of having painted it; his brother Émile replied that people had said it already (106.0019).

On 30 August she wrote the sentence that reads like a stage direction for the end: "Le tableau est installé, tout est là, il n'y a que moi qui manque" (105.0756). In the same entry she predicted her own death, by name of cause and almost to the month: "Voici septembre, le mauvais temps n'est pas loin... au point où j'en suis, je puis en finir en six semaines avec une pleurésie quelconque. C'est ainsi que je partirai du reste. Comme je travaillerai quand même au tableau... et qu'il fera froid..." (105.0764, 105.0766).

The last six weeks are a record of obstruction and failing strength: ten days lost while Geraldy, the perspective man, kept her waiting to set the background in perspective, "et il fait beau tous les jours !" (106.0046); "Et je ne peux pas travailler. Mon tableau ne sera pas fait. Voilà, Voilà. Voilà !" (106.0123); "Ah ! Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu et mon tableau. Mon tableau. Mon tableau. Mon tableau !" (106.0439). Her last word on her own work, on 16 October 1884, is four words long: "Fini le tableau de cette année" (106.0451) -- written in the entry in which Bastien-Lepage, too weak to walk, was carried in to sit with her and said "oh ! si je pouvais peindre !" (106.0449). The diary ends on 20 October. She died eleven days later; he died on 10 December.

References in Diary

- First mention: 1884-06-04 (104.0530) -- the idea arrives as wrestlers: "Eh bien mes lutteurs... Ivresse !"
- 1884-06-09 (104.0578) -- watching wrestlers at Montmartre; "que c'est donc intéressant la rue !"
- 1884-06-24 (104.0662–0663) -- canvas delivered, wrestlers sketched in
- 1884-07-03 (105.0014) -- hunting wrestlers at the fair and on the outer boulevards with Rosalie and Irma
- 1884-07-04 (105.0029), 1884-07-05 (105.0040), 1884-07-12 (105.0155) -- the subject fails: night work, Falguière's precedent, the family's talk of scandal
- 1884-07-09 (105.0106–0107) -- the pivot: "la rue avec ses physionomies, c'est ça que je voulais"
- 1884-07-15 (105.0198–0199, 105.0206) -- the wrestlers abandoned; "rien ne peut égaler la grandeur des sujets au repos"
- 1884-07-18 (105.0259) -- the picture settled in her head; a flower panorama while she waits to begin
- 1884-07-21 (105.0278, 105.0280–0281) -- four hours' walk to find the corner; the manifesto against Meissonier, Cabanel and Bouguereau
- 1884-07-23 (105.0302) -- models recruited at five in the morning at La Villette and Les Batignolles
- 1884-07-24 (105.0312) -- Bastien-Lepage's advice, heard "avec respect"
- 1884-08-09 (105.0523–0524) -- sketched in colour; the dizziness and the rests
- 1884-08-11 (105.0535, 105.0548) -- the crowd around the cab; "je me traîne et je lutte"
- 1884-08-13 to 08-16 (105.0565, 105.0569, 105.0571, 105.0593, 105.0596, 105.0608) -- Émile's easel-and-shade rig; sketching from a cab
- 1884-08-16 (105.0613–0619) -- Bastien-Lepage as judge: "pendant que j'y travaille, c'est ma mort"
- 1884-08-21 (105.0666) -- the corner photographed at seven in the morning for the exact lines of the pavements
- 1884-08-27 (105.0735), 1884-08-30 (105.0756) -- "Le tableau est installé, tout est là, il n'y a que moi qui manque"
- 1884-08-30 (105.0764, 105.0766) -- she predicts her own death from a chill, two months before it happens
- 1884-09-13 (106.0019) -- Bastien-Lepage's joke about being accused of having painted it
- 1884-09-15 (106.0046) -- ten days lost to Geraldy the perspecteur
- 1884-10-01 (106.0123), 1884-10-12 (106.0439) -- "Mon tableau ne sera pas fait"
- 1884-10-16 (106.0451) -- the last word on her work: "Fini le tableau de cette année" (with 106.0449, Bastien-Lepage carried in to sit with her)

Related Entries

- #Art_practice -- Marie's work as an artist, and what survives of it
- #Jules_Bastien_Lepage -- the standard she measured it against, dying alongside her
- #Emile_Bastien_Lepage -- who built her the apparatus to paint in the street
- #Tony_Robert_Fleury -- her teacher
- #Rosalie -- her maid, who recruited the models
- #Un_meeting -- the picture that preceded it
- #Le_Printemps -- the Sèvres canvas she was finishing as this one began

Sources

- Catalogue des œuvres de Mlle Bashkirtseff, Union des Femmes Peintres & Sculpteurs, préface de François Coppée, Paris: Ludovic Baschet, 9 February 1885, no. 33 (2,47 × 3,15 m), and the notice signed "Une Amie" -- Gallica ark:/12148/bpt6k131932r
- All diary quotations from the French originals in `/content/_original/`