The card players (1877)
Також відомий як: nos joueurs, j'ai ébauché sur toile nos joueurs, La Partie de cartes, Card players
Overview
On 10 June 1877, at Nice, Marie sketched the family's card game "à la lueur de deux bougies que le vent faisait vaciller beaucoup trop", and the next morning, 11 June, "j'ai ébauché sur toile nos joueurs, Walitsky, la Daniloff, Bihovetz et Anitchkoff" (072.0001). She is excited by the task: "J'ai la tête montée de peindre quatre personnes assises, de faire les poses des mains, des bras, les expressions. Je n'ai jamais fait que des têtes séparées en grand et en petit, je me contentais de les semer comme des fleurs sur la toile." It is, in her own words, her first composition with several seated figures.
Marie and this work
The same day she also prepares the charcoal cartoon of a second composition (#Mirage_projet_1877). Per Kernberger (2013), an illustrated plate is captioned "The Card Game" (1877) and located at Nice; the project's works catalogue records it as "La Partie de cartes, 1877, Nice (Kernberger img 126 only)" with no museum record found (`docs/research/marie-bashkirtseff-works-catalogue.md`, row 12). Connecting that picture to this diary sketch is plausible because of the date and subject, but is not established; hence status "attributed". No public-domain image is available here.
References in Diary
- 1877-06-11 (072.0001): the sketch and the oil study
Related Entries
- #Mirage_projet_1877 -- the charcoal composition of the same day
- #Marie_Bashkirtseff_Works -- hub for her works
Sources
- Diary paragraph 072.0001 in `content/_original/`.
- Katherine Kernberger, I Am the Most Interesting Book of All, Vol. I (Fonthill Press, 2013), illustration caption "The Card Game" -- as recorded in the project catalogue; the caption has not been rechecked in the book for this entry.