Portrait de sa belle-sœur (Alexandrine Patchenko)

Overview

Portrait de sa belle-sœur (oil on canvas, 92,5 × 73 cm, 1881) is Marie's portrait of Alexandrine Patchenko, the wife of her brother Paul. It is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. SK-A-1988, given to the museum by the artist's mother, Maria Stepanovna Bashkirtseva née Babanina, in June 1902. It is monogrammed "MB / 1881" at lower right and was painted in Paris.

Of all Marie's surviving works this is the one the public can see best: the Rijksmuseum has released a 2756 × 3490 px reproduction under CC0, museum-grade open access. For an artist whose most famous pictures survive only in poor scans, that is not a small thing.

A name to watch. The museum and the catalogues call the sitter Alexandrine Patchenko. Marie never once calls her that. In the diary she is "Nini" or, more often, "la femme à Paul". Anyone searching the French text for "Alexandrine" will find nothing.

Description

Oil on canvas, 92,5 × 73 cm. Marie leaves no description of the composition, but she does leave a description of her sitter's colouring, and it is the best thing in the file: "Elle est d'une couleur… ravissante, fraîche sans crudité, veloutée, jeune" (¶ 094.0060). She thought the finished picture fell well short of what she could do.

Making of the Work

The picture was painted over about a fortnight at the turn of 1881–82, in a burst of energy and then in illness. It begins on 29 December 1881 (¶ 094.0028): "Je fais le portrait de la femme à Paul, hier c'était une telle reprise de forces que je voulais faire à la fois Dina, Nini et Irma." Two days later she took the esquisse to Tony Robert-Fleury, who found it "très originale, très original d'arrangement et bien parti" (¶ 094.0029).

It was finished on 11 January 1882, and her own verdict is characteristically merciless: "Le portrait est fini, ce n'est pas encore ça !! Ce n'est même pas ce que je puis faire… C'est moins ! C'est si difficile !" (¶ 094.0060). The conditions were wretched — she was working in a draught between two doors, running a temperature of 41°, and the thick January fogs ruined the light (¶¶ 094.0085, 094.0094). She was twenty-three, and already deaf in one ear and consumptive.

References in Diary

- First mention — 1881-12-29, ¶ 094.0028: "Je fais le portrait de la femme à Paul"
- 1881-12-31, ¶ 094.0029 — the esquisse shown to Tony Robert-Fleury: "très original d'arrangement et bien parti"
- 1882-01-11, ¶ 094.0060 — finished, and judged a failure by its maker
- 1882-01-19, ¶ 094.0085 · 1882-01-20, ¶ 094.0094 — the draught, the 41° fever, and the fog

The painting is not mentioned again after January 1882; it does not reappear in carnets 097–106.

Related Entries

- #Nini — the sitter, Alexandrine Patchenko
- #Paul — her husband, Marie's brother
- #Portrait_Paul — Marie's portrait of the brother, at Nice
- #Tony_Robert_Fleury · #Art_practice · #Portrait

Sources

- Rijksmuseum, SK-A-1988 — dimensions, monogram, provenance, CC0 image
- Wikidata Q17325362
- The diary itself, carnet 094