Katherine Keenum

Blog post alert: Paintings of Late Autumn at The Eclectic Light Company points out that by mid November in northern latitudes, the light has changed and colors have become muted. That is certainly true of this one of a bank on the Seine in Paris by the artist whose name in her native Ukrainian is Mariia Bashkirtseva. Let's be honest, it's not the most fascinating picture in the world, but it does have a melancholy charm, doesn't it? And for a writer, its raggedy, leaf-strewn, road and overturned bench might suggest just the right details for evoking a subdued autumnal scene. Other paintings in the post, moreover, are brighter, more dynamic, or more vivid as they capture other moods of autumn. Well worth a visit

Website alert: I have blogged in the past about Marie Bashkirtseff, on whom I based my character La Russe. Today, I wish I'd called her The Ukrainian. She was in her teens when she posed in this costume of her native Poltava. For another photo from the same session and more, wonderful images, see the excellent essay
"I Am My Own Heroine": How Marie Bashkirtseff Rewrote the Route to Fame by Sonia Wilson.
Image via Wikipedia.

Blog tip: I’ve just discovered Bas van Houwelingen’s long-running blog Reading and Art. Each post features a single artist’s images of people reading. For more from Bashkirtseff, click here.

Only one truncated paragraph about Effie and Miss Isobel’s Pont Aven fête at the end of August 1879 survived editing. In the fuller account, the ladies are agog when they receive a drawing of Joan of Arc from Jules Bastien-Lepage for their  Read More 

Anyone researching women students at the Académie Julian comes up against Countess Marie Bashkirtseff from the get-go. Besides a self-portrait, she painted a picture, In the Studio of a women's class and kept a voluminous diary in which she recorded her drama-queen feelings, studio gossip, and lots of concrete particulars about what went on in the classes. Talented, vain about her looks, ambitious, and far from tactful, she attracted devoted followers but also provoked many of her classmates, some of whom rallied behind another star at the school, Louise Breslau. I suppose it was a detractor who produced this cartoon! Read More