Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/90

Rh She could not read very much, as her eyes were not strong enough to read and paint; she avoided people because of her deafness; her cough was very tiresome and her breathing difficult.

At the Salon of 1881 her picture was well hung and was praised by artists. In the autumn of that year she was very ill, but happily, about the beginning of 1882, she was much better and again enthusiastic about her painting. She had been in Spain and excited admiration in Madrid by the excellence of her copy of "Vulcan," by Velasquez. January 15th she wrote: "I am wrapped up in my art. I think I caught the sacred fire in Spain at the same time that I caught the pleurisy. From being a student I now begin to be an artist. This sudden influx of power puts me beside myself with joy. I sketch future pictures; I dream of painting an Ophelia. Potain has promised to take me to Saint-Anne to study faces of the mad women there, and then I am full of the idea of painting an old man, an Arab, sitting down singing to the accompaniment of a kind of guitar ; and I am thinking also of a large affair for the coming Salon—a view of the Carnival; but for this it would be necessary that I should go to Nice—to Naples first for the Carnival, and then to Nice, where I have my villa, to paint it in open air."

She now met Bastien-Lepage, who, while he was some- what severe in his criticism of her work, told her seriously that she was "marvellously gifted." This gave her great pleasure, and, indeed, just at this time the whole tone of the journal and her art enthusiasm are most comforting after the preceding despairing months. From this time