Katherine Keenum

There are struggling Bohemian artists and then there are the fashionistas. This sketch of Hanna Hirsch-Pauli by Eva Bonnier shows what the well-dressed art student wore to the all-important Paris Salon in the mid 1880s.
Image via 19thc-artworldwide.org

Article alert: Artists' diaries and correspondence were treasure troves when I was researching Where the Light Falls. I always specially loved pages on which the writer had included little sketches. How I wish A City of One's Own: The Parisian Letters of the Swedish Painter Hanna Hirsch-Pauli had been available to me then! No matter, the topic of women artists in Paris remains fascinating; and this article not only furthers scholarly understanding, but may well enrich someone else's historical fiction.

Well, I first added this image to my collection of paintings that give an idea of how much light was available at night before the advent of electricity. Now it seems like an emblem of how most of us are handling the election: withdrawing from the darkness into what little light we can find in reading and the company of friends. For more about the artist and the painting, see Hanna Hirsch-Pauli: Friendship Goals and Feminism in the 19th-Century Stockholm.