Marie Bashkirtseff

Marie Bashkirtseff painted scenes of everyday Paris, especially children and young people in the streets, with a realism inspired by Jules Bastien-Lepage. Her work is direct and observant, and she painted people with unusual sympathy.

Born near Poltava in present-day Ukraine, she moved to France with her family as a girl and studied at the Académie Julian in Paris. Her painting The Meeting of 1884, showing a group of boys talking on a street corner, is in the Musée d’Orsay. She died young at 25, and many of her works were later lost.

She is also famous for her diary, published in 1887, which became a classic. Look at her portraits of girls and young women, which have a candid, lively quality.