Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva

Background

Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva was born on November 11, 1860, in Gavrontsi near Poltava, Poltavs'ka Oblast', Ukraine to a wealthy noble family, but her parents separated when she was quite young.

Education

Maria Konstantinovna grew up mostly abroad, traveling with her mother throughout most of Europe, with longer spells in Germany and on the Riviera, until the family settled in Paris. Educated privately and with early musical talent, she lost her chance at a career as a singer when illness destroyed her voice. She then determined to become an artist, and she studied painting in France at the Robert-Fleury studio and at the Académie Julian.

Career

In her short lifetime, Marie Bashkirtseff exhibiting at the Paris Salon as early as 1880 and every year thereafter until her death (except 1883). In 1884, Marie Bashkirtseff exhibited a portrait of Paris slum children entitled The Meeting and a pastel portrait of her cousin, for which she received an honorable mention. Bashkirtseff's best-known works are The Meeting and her 1881 In the Studio, a portrait of her fellow artists at work.

Dying of tuberculosis at the age of 25, Maria Konstantinovna lived just long enough to emerge as an intellectual in Paris in the 1880s. She wrote several articles for Hubertine Auclert's feminist newspaper La Citoyenne in 1881 under the nom de plume "Pauline Orrel."

Maria Konstantinovna died in Paris in 1884, and she is buried in Cimetière de Passy, Paris.