Le Printemps

Overview

Le Printemps -- the picture Marie herself proposed calling Avril -- is the large canvas she painted out of doors at Sèvres between March and June 1884, in the last spring of her life. It is generally dated 1884, oil on canvas, and measured at 215,5 × 199,5 cm (reported elsewhere with the figures transposed).

Its present location is probable, not established. It is attributed to the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg by AWARE, which is published in partnership with the Musée d'Orsay -- but the museum does not publish the work in its online catalogue (it publishes only one Bashkirtseff painting of the eight it states it holds), and goskatalog.ru is not reachable from outside Russia. The identification with *no. 34, Avril, 2,15 × 2,00 m* in the 1885 posthumous catalogue is a very close dimensional match and is almost certainly right, but it too is an inference rather than a documented equivalence.

No adequate reproduction of this picture is freely available. The only file on Wikimedia Commons measures 373 × 400 pixels -- unusable for a canvas over two metres tall -- and no image is included in this entry for that reason. It is one of the most conspicuous illustration gaps in Marie's surviving work.

Description

A peasant girl lies dreaming at the foot of a flowering apple tree, in grass full of violets and small yellow flowers. Marie's own account of it, on the day it had her by the throat, is the best description there is: "Ce tableau m'empoigne ! Le pommier est en fleurs... dans l'herbe, des violettes, des fleurs jaunes qui éclatent comme des petits soleils." And the figure: "Et la fille qui rêve au pied de l'arbre, 'alanguie et grisée' comme dit A. Theuriet" -- borrowing the phrase from the novelist and poet André Theuriet (104.0001–0002).

Making of the Work

She went out to Sèvres every day through April 1884. The subject then did to her what plein-air painting does: the season moved on and the picture could not follow. "Le paysage a tellement changé qu'on ne peut plus y toucher, ce n'est plus le printemps," she wrote on 25 May, adding a painter's confession -- "Et puis mes fleurs de pommiers sont devenues jaunes (sur le tableau), j'y avais fourré de l'huile" (104.0331). By mid-June she had turned against it: "Ça ne m'intéresse plus ce pommier en fleurs et ces violettes ! Et cette paysanne assoupie !... C'est du mauvais Bastien !" (104.0616) -- the charge of imitating Jules Bastien-Lepage, which she feared from critics, she here levels at herself. Three days later: "Le tableau de Sèvres et le portrait de Jacques, deux cauchemars !!" (104.0626).

The canvas came to the studio in early July, and with it the title: "Il est ici le tableau de Sèvres, à l'atelier. On peut l'appeler Avril. Ça m'est égal, mais cet Avril me paraît si exécrablement mauvais !!!" (105.0028). The next day Tony Robert-Fleury went over it point by point -- the hair, the hand, the apron, the background too green -- but concluded that "comme ébauche c'est très bien"; and Ducros, to her disgust, rated it above Un meeting: "Cet imbécile la met au-dessus du Meeting !!" (105.0031–0038). It was finished by the end of August, and its finishing marks the beginning of the last barren stretch of her working life: "Depuis que le tableau de Sèvres est fini, je n'ai rien fait. Rien, sauf deux misérables panneaux" (105.0754).

*Do not confuse it with the allegorical Printemps*** -- a sculpted composition or relief, planned with seventeen or eighteen figures, that she never executed. That project appears at 100.0100 and 100.0204–0205 (July–August 1883), 103.0547 (March 1884: "on doit sentir les effluves du printemps qui font rêver la femme") and 104.0516 (June 1884). The two share a title and a mood and nothing else.

References in Diary

- First mention: 1884-04-16 (104.0001–0002) -- the daily journeys to Sèvres, the flowering apple tree, the girl dreaming at its foot
- 1884-05-25 (104.0331) -- the season outruns the picture; the apple blossom turned yellow by oil
- 1884-06-15 (104.0616) -- "C'est du mauvais Bastien !"
- 1884-06-18 (104.0626) -- "Le tableau de Sèvres et le portrait de Jacques, deux cauchemars !!"
- 1884-07-04 (105.0028) -- brought to the studio, and named: "On peut l'appeler Avril"
- 1884-07-05 (105.0031–0034, 105.0038) -- Tony's technical notes; "comme ébauche c'est très bien"; Ducros ranks it above the Meeting
- 1884-08-30 (105.0754) -- finished, and followed by nothing

Related Entries

- #Art_practice -- Marie's work as an artist
- #Sevres -- where it was painted
- #Jules_Bastien_Lepage -- the influence she accused herself of
- #Tony_Robert_Fleury -- her teacher, and its first critic
- #Un_meeting -- the Salon picture of the same year
- #La_Rue -- the canvas she began as this one was ending

Sources

- AWARE — Marie Bashkirtseff -- the sole basis for the attribution to the State Russian Museum, and for the dimensions
- Catalogue des œuvres de Mlle Bashkirtseff, Union des Femmes Peintres & Sculpteurs, Paris: Ludovic Baschet, 9 February 1885, no. 34 (Avril, 2,15 × 2,00 m) -- Gallica ark:/12148/bpt6k131932r
- State Russian Museum, artist page -- for the museum's own account of its holdings
- All diary quotations from the French originals in `/content/_original/`