Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/92

Rh chef d'œuvre, I maintain. The faces and the attitudes of the children are strikingly real. The glimpse of meagre landscape expresses the sadness of the poorer neighborhoods."

Previous to this time, her picture of two boys, called "Jean and Jacques," had been reproduced in the Russian Illustration^ and she now received many requests for permission to photograph and reproduce her "Meeting," and connoisseurs made requests to be admitted to her studio. All this gratified her while it also surprised. She was at work on a picture called "Spring," for which she went to Sevres, to paint in the open.

Naturally she hoped for a Salon medal, and her friends encouraged her wish—but alas! she was cruelly disappointed. Many thought her unfairly treated, but it was remembered that the year before she had publicly spoken of the committee as "idiots"!

People now wished to buy her pictures and in many ways she realized that she was successful. How pathetic her written words : "I have spent six years, working ten hours a day, to gain what The knowledge of all I have yet to learn in my art, and a fatal disease!"

It is probable that the "Meeting" received no medal because it was suspected that Mile. Bashkirtseff had been aided in her work. No one could tell who had originated this idea, but as some medals had been given to women who did not paint their pictures alone, the committee were timid, although there seems to have been no question as to superiority.

A friendship had grown up between the families Bash-