Everyone associates autumn with fate. The falling leaves and the cooling air remind us of the coming cold. Though I find winter the most beautiful of all, autumn has the colors of fire as if nature wants to fight against death for the last time. Marie Bashkirtseff – just Marie hereafter, for goodness’ sake- faced death in all her short life.
Marie was a Ukrainian girl with a rich family, who left for France when she was very young. When she was sixteen, doctors said she had incurable tuberculosis. She kept a diary, which is now a famous memorandum of the latter half of the nineteenth century artistic society of France. Marie’s mentor and friend was Jules Bastien-Lepage, a young, naturalist painter.
“This idiot of a Bastien told someone that he finds me gifted, charming.” Writes Marie in 1882. They admired each other’s works. From her diary it was obvious she had romantic feelings for him. She said, “Bastien—it’s a childish desire of mine that he should belong to me.” But Jules was unaware of her feelings. He had an older, rich lover. Marie was very jealous.
Jules had stomach problems, which Marie thought was disgusting: “Acknowledgeable illnesses are a cold, a headache, a turned ankle, rheumatism, even fever, but indigestion! Yuck!” He went to Algeria to cure it. For the months he was away Marie thought of him more and more. “I hate myself. I detest myself. I despise myself. I’m ugly, silly, ridiculous, stupid, hideous. Say what you want, there’s the undeniable fact that I want him and I won’t get him.”
In October of 1883 Marie wanted to paint something natural. Despite her declining health she worked outdoor, well-covered everywhere like an old lady with only her eyes visible. “I went to paint at the Grande Jatte—an avenue of trees with golden tones on a medium size canvas.” That is the Autumn painting. For me it is not vividly in flame with orange shades but rather closer to winter-colors. The avenue is abandoned and ragged as if many promenades have depleted it. The road is full of cartwheel-scars. Soon nature will go to rest, maybe forever. The little bench on the lower left corner already has.
Marie met Jules again almost one year later, in 1884’s June. Until then she was sometimes bereft of hope (“I tell myself clearly that he will never be in love with me”), another time she is in denial, (“I think of him constantly, and he has become the object of my dreams, though I don’t give a damn about him”), and sometimes she is full of hope, (“The cards say that Jules will love me or loves me. That would be magnificent. However, I’d prefer to become famous. Well, it’s understood that I’ll become famous. And this great man will love me—next year.”)
When finally she meets him it becomes obvious that he is very sick. He has stomach cancer and can barely move. Marie visits him regularly and these visits are very calm and nice. Their whole family is involved; her mother accompanies her and his mom takes care of them. They take Jules to the Bois de Boulogne to have some fresh air. His brother, Emile, is with them. “I was facing him in the carriage, our feet on the same hot water bottle and under the same blanket. We must have looked odd. Poor dear.”
Marie keeps being in denial, as if she was superior to him and she was ashamed of her own feelings for him, like Mr. Darcy was. “And he’s sick and shrinking and ugly. And why occupy myself with him? Bah! I’ll find another subject. Good night.” It is hard to understand her true feelings since she writes things like, “You understand that I would like him to need me, this poor child. It’s very entertaining to play with him like a good angel. ” But then on another day she says, “For Bastien I would kill myself.” I think she was like an imprisoned, sick bird who played her whole life, never living through reality.
As autumn comes, Marie and Jules feel worse and her visits cease. Jules decides to go to her house instead. Almost every day in October, his brother, Emile, carries him over his shoulders and puts him onto an armchair next to the weak girl. They talk into the dark hours. Marie continues her bedeviled tone, saying, “This monster of a Jules wants to take care of me. He wants to cure me of my cough in a month. He buttons my jacket for me and always is anxious about my being well covered.”
They comfort each other, what else do they have? They cannot walk anymore, and they cannot paint anymore. Sometimes even a smile seems impossible. Jules is in constant pain. Who else can understand this better than the hard-breathed Marie? “When one is like that, one is detached from the earth. He already floats above us. There are days when I feel like that, too. You see people; they talk to you; you answer, but you are no longer of the earth; it’s a calm indifference, not sorrowful, a little like an opium dream.”
Marie’s diary stops on October 20th. On the last day of the month she dies. Jules lives five more weeks and dies on December 10th. Their art works are scattered around the world in museums like Musee d’Orsay, Chicago Art Institute, Metropolitan Museum New York, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, National Gallery of Scotland, and many more.
I do not know when they met for the last time or how Marie gave farewell to Jules. Probably like this: “So, goodbye, dear angel. I despise you.”
