Marie Bashkirtseff: Ekphrastic Writing Responses

In the Studio, by Marie Bashkirtseff (France, b. Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire, now Ukraine) 1881

​Lady's Man 

I’m being John the Baptist this time round.
We’ll soon have tea.  I hope there’s madeleines,
Not just tartines.  This fleece may come unwound – 
They'd have a subject for their paint-pots then!
Maman says it’s my first real job; I’m paid
Each week.  She says, Merci, mon Dieu, mon gosse.
Our landlord is a bastard.  She’s afraid;
That’s why I’m holding up this silly cross
For these mad ladies, since they pay to look.
To hear Maman, they’ll all end up alone; 
They’d do much better if they learned to cook,
Not paint strange boys when they could have their own  –
And then we count the sous (some francs as well)
And whisper, Mais, merci, mesdemoiselles.

Ruth S. Baker

Ruth S. Baker has published in a few poetry journals.  She has a special love for animals and visual art.

**

​In the Monument

I too
have a tomb
             a lust 
for fame

a name
etched
           gold

flakes
salvaged 
on seraphim
           wing

pull me
          down
beyond
decision

let me
         feel 
marble
        soothing
my ashes

Donna-Lee Smith

Donna-Lee Smith writes from Montreal where cemeteries grace Mount Royal, reminding us  that we too are waiting. ​

**

The Woman in Cobalt

The room was an inferno. The heady scent of linseed hardly masked the stench of sweaty women bound in their soured, long dresses. Mother would beat the soil out of them for a coin if she had her way. Her sendoff that morning stung my ears.

“Comportez-vous bien. They are not paying you to slouch.” I snivelled agreement as the broom handle struck my bottom. 

“I know, maman! Easy money. I’ll do good,” I told her. She set her jaw and glared at me.

“Oui. Or there will be no food on the table for you, mom petit.”

The statue pose took getting used to. I prayed the scarlet welts on my backside were obscured from the painters’ keen eyes. The red-haired woman to my right studied my ribs with an intensity that made my welts throb. Could she see the stripes etched by the broom? The thought made me queasy. 

I focused my gaze on the back of the room where rows of canvases hung to dry like laundry. Blocks of colour. Nude people. I locked my knees, squared my shoulders and counted my breaths. I let my peripheral vision go fuzzy.

I was posed as Saint John the Baptist, the cousin who baptized the risen Lord. I imagined the crisp water of the river Jordan wetting my ankles and creeping up my legs, the current rushing past fast and deep. Cool cobalt outstretched on all sides. 

My right arm was suddenly foreign to me—a numb appendage. I thought, how droll. I imagined myself armless, plunging Jesus into the rushing water by sheer spiritual will.

After the baptism, we would feast on bread and fish with enough butter to reach every edge. Wine would be served, and I would fill myself. Friends would join us. Jesus, fresh from baptism, would share a parable. Mary, the Virgin Mother, would tap me on the shoulder and say I had conducted a miraculous baptism. She would embrace me, and her halo would cast a golden light on my face.

Animated debate snapped me from my reverie. I was hit with a surge of panic. Had I moved? Would I be sent home without wages? I darted my eyes from head to head to head. I caught a thread of stray words.

“Quality of shadow.” “Play of light.” 

Mon Dieu, I had stayed still. The air returned to my body. In relief, I studied the painters for a long moment. The women artists at L’Académie Julian appeared to see me as a bundle of lines and contours, not a boy. I had not resolved if that worked in my favour or against. They leaned over their work like bankers doing sums.

Might they notice if I budged a millimetre? I thought I might be enraged if I had spent hours rendering perfect proportions to look up and find the model had moved and my composition ruined. Of course, they would notice if my hair fell out of place. 

I doubled my focus and scanned the room for a place to rest my gaze. I had ages before our next scheduled break.

At break time, I circled the room and eyed the work in progress. I saw myself in blobs of fleshy tones in various states of doneness. Nothing about the work suggested it had not been painted by a man. 

The woman in cobalt locked eyes with me. I was frozen, expressionless. She smiled. I continued my tour and studied the caked pallets with their array of paint. I touched a puddle of crimson and found it was as soft as melted butter. Curious.

When the session ended, I collected my things and headed toward the exit. I passed the woman in cobalt. She took stock of her supplies on the floor but paused and tousled my hair. 

“Such soulful eyes,” she said. Her voice was no more than a ragged whisper. I feared I might melt into the floorboards under her scrutiny, yet the tenderness in her expression held me there.

“Did I get them right?” she asked. 

She meant for me to examine her canvas. I obliged with amazement. She waited. The uncanny realism stupefied me. In honesty, I had seen more paintings that day than ever in my ten years, but even so, her canvas was remarkable. I gaped at her. 

“How did you arrive at that shade of brown? Get it so lifelike?” I asked. She beamed. 

“Awe, you have the mind of an artist!” she said. It was my turn to beam. 

A flit of coughs followed. She covered her mouth and gestured an apology. “Doctor says it’s laryngitis again. Nothing serious.”

The cough sounded pained, but I was glad the doctor thought it was minor because I longed to see the woman in cobalt again and again. 

“If you help me clean my brushes, I may share my secret,” she teased. 

*

Years would pass before I registered that the woman in cobalt was Marie Bashkirtseff. That the prized realist painter had bestowed her secret on me, a starving boy. 

When art critics ask me about my signature style, I credit Marie as my first teacher. Incredible, they say. 

“You have caught the Bashkirtseff magic, jeune homme.” My heart flutters each time I receive such praise. 

“Tell us! Quel a été son sage conseil?”

To that, I chuckle and say, “You will have to help me clean my paintbrushes for that secret!”

Every October, I stop at Le Fleuriste for the richest blue blossoms in stock. I carry them through Champ-de-Mars, past le Tour Eiffel, across le Pont d’Iéna to Cimetiére de Passy. I sink into the frost-covered ground and tell Marie, who rests with the angels, that the critics are probing for her secrets. 

“Should I tell them?” I whisper. I set the bouquet close to the monument and think it might be good for the world to know Marie’s first lesson.

“Do more than look,” she had said. “See people, and they come to life!”

Marsha Masseau

Marsha Masseau is a visual and literary artist living in Ottawa, Ontario. Her artwork has been shown and collected locally; her writing has been published in anthologies and stand-alone in both physical and digital form. She adores exploring the margins between the two forms. Marsha is an MFA in Creative Writing candidate at the University of British Columbia.

**

Modèle Garçon
 
He observes me.  
 
In a bold voice, the boy model in a fur loincloth calls out, "What is your name?" then "Is your husband rich?" Believes he must be if I have the leisure to paint.  
 
I am, I am told, pretty. The boy asks for a sou for saying so. 

I give him a third eye instead.   

He wishes to be portrayed as a gentleman in an emerald waistcoat and striped trousers, have a pocket watch and fob, and—although no one will see—curly hair on a muscular chest.  

One after another after another, his eyes blink. They see opportunity. "Does your husband need a little footman for your carriage?"

I paint long colt legs and shiny black hooves on the boy. Giggle. "Now, prance like a high-knee pony." Giggle.

His eyes are not amused. 

He calls me Marie Antoinette and degenerate. 

For that, I give him horse teeth.

Seems I am not as fair as he first thought. The common boy now prefers the blonde artist in billowing sky blue who sits nearest the podium.

He praises her proper, naturalistic style and how lightly she holds the brush, lauds how her lavender sachet masks the stink in this hot room. The turpentine, the dresses in need of laundering.  

His mother and sister take in washing. He asks me, "Madame, do you have a laundress?" 

Aggravating! A boy model opining and pedalling. Humph. 

When old enough to paint, the urchin can interpret his blonde lady in any manner he desires. He may change his name—I do not care to know what it is—to André and develop surrealism.

Then, suddenly, I think he may not. May not change art nor endure what is necessary to turn away from convention and deliberately defy reason. 

Rather, the boy may die young. He may succumb to consumption or conscription. Wars are coming.

Sad it is to paint his mouth as a round mourning brooch with a wisp of black hair and a jet stone. 

Without the money from his posing, how would the family survive?  

I draw feet under the brooch; fleet feet because his younger brothers would have to become pick-pockets.  

I dab two pink rosebuds on the brooch. 

His sister would dry her hands and scrub no more when men notice her bloom and her bosom.  

Sell the brooch, Bereaved Mother. Buy potatoes.  
 
I break the boy's slight figure into pieces. He snaps easily.  

In an act of experimentation as well as charity, I draw cubes and, in each, sketch a body part.   

"Come, play," I exclaim.     

The boy's eyes are the spinning tops he never had. He leaps down from the podium and runs to me. 

I can be kind. "Child, these are building blocks. How would you like me to arrange them? What would you like to become?" 

Silence. Shrug. He does not know. Knows only that he wishes to be painted in fine clothes.  

Mon Dieu.

The preferred artist bangs her brush on her easel, commands him to return to posing.  
 
Still, he lingers to tell me how his mother spit-wipes his face before he comes to Académie Julian to seek work. Tempting to fight along the way, but he does not. "Boys with black eyes are not chosen." 

I sketch dove wings on his back to lift him above the mean streets and deliver him to the podium every morning.  

Still, a cherub he is not. 

Wink. "Soon, I will appear as a satyr and earn seven sous for standing naked." Wink.

In his bold voice, the boy wonders aloud whether my husband will allow me to paint him when nude and quite a man.

I do not answer. 

Better that he pose as David or recreate Manet's The Fifer or even The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough. My fellow ladies long to dress him as a dandy in a satiny suit with bows. 

If they do, I will be the one who smoothes the boy's hair and pats his white cheeks to rosy-red. I will whisper to him to keep a gentle light in his three eyes, an expression of the good man he will become when—if—he grows up.
 
​Karen Walker

​Karen Walker (she/her) writes short in a low basement in Ontario, Canada. Her most recent work is in or forthcoming in New Flash Fiction Review, Exist Otherwise, Misery Tourism, Does it Have Pockets? and EGG+FROG. 

**

Apart from a Double Gin and Tonic

there’s nothing I like more
than a group of women
freely doing what they want,
the only male among them
posing on a pedestal
which doesn’t mean he
is idolised, elevated,
glorified or revered,
even allowing for his youth
and the fact his parents 
raised him to feel superior.
He stands swaddled 
in a tiny piece of cloth
undoubtedly entertaining the notion
of eternal worship 
by the female sex. 
His prepubescent form,
dwarfed by the power
of estrogen, shrinks
to an ever paler version
of its imagined self. 
The smell of kerosine lingers
long after all the brushes 
are cleaned of him.

Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman

Linda is an Australian poet who lives and writes in the coastal village of Lake Tabourie, NSW, on traditional Yuin country. Linda enjoys seeing her poetic work published in various excellent literary spaces. ​

**

To Marie Bashkirtseff Regarding In the Studio

The classroom was for you a place
disinclination would not grace
with homage in expected style,
but chose instead by wit the wile

of composition here perceived
detailing truth to be believed
in circumstance as it occurred
that echoed hence forever heard

as moment in which you implied
persistence never satisfied
became by journal if not ouevre
your gift unending left to serve

the eye beholding kindred call
to most important art of all.

Portly Bard

Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.

Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.

**

Leader of the Pack

Now here’s a canvassing for art  -
nude studies only part portrayed -
beheaded as of no account;
as if distraction, forms below,
commission, Julian himself,
commercial, his Atelier.

For in one stroke Marie displayed,
where paraphernalia laid out,
a self-affirming soul proclaimed
as Rodolphe pays - the craft excites.
Faint praise, poor protest on her part -
‘the subject does not fascinate’.

Her diary-speak - as centrepiece -
speaks volumes in coquettish style;
‘so taken with’, and ‘so convinced’,
and ‘very amusing’ it may be.
For her, recall, ‘not fascinate’ -
the lady doth protest too much.

Enough! ‘Never been painted’ writ,
this ‘wonderful notoriety’,
reluctant rôle play thus dismissed.
A bright blue dress, brush, mahlstick pose,
(what caused her face-turn into light?)
a chair draped length, of purple fold…

Another skill as advertised,
she handles well, manipulates
the apparatus, chemistry.
The lad raised up here paint puts down -
his loin cloth wrap, sheep’s clothing so?
But who’s the leader of the pack?

Stephen Kingsnorth
 
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review.  He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com

**

​The Subject
 
The subject suspiciously eyes the skeleton to his left – and a step or two behind him. He can’t face it directly, for fear of being chastised by this wonderful femme palette of artists. A quiet stillness is his brief. He must stay “toujours comme on peut l’être.” His peripheral vision is enough. 

‘Why the skeleton?’ he ponders. A mannequin of bones. ‘What does it represent? Does it act as a reminder to the artists to think about their framework first and foremost? The bare essentials. Add the tissue, skin and a beating heart in time.’ Big, deep and meaningful thoughts for a twelve-year-old boy.

He feels somewhat exposed in nothing more than a tissu, though strangely secure, powerful even with staff in hand. He does sense safety in this atelier féminin. 

Still, that squelette and all its exposed bones! His weight shifts on to his right leg, away from the offending object, irrationally thinking he could leap from the podium and run if it came to life.

Marie Bashkirtseff is in the studio. Not yet twenty-three years and she is brilliantly artistique. She seems more interested in the skeleton than the subject, so the subject thinks. Perhaps she will paint it. Does it represent how she feels? She has been quite unwell. This is known because she is so well known and respected in the Parisian arts community. They say she was an exquisite singer but illness cruelly ruined her voice. 

From the romanticism of opera to the realism of oil painting.
 
Adam Stone

Adam lives and loves on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, Australia - Wathaurong land. He is an award-winning lyricist and published writer who relishes short story and flash fiction writing. Member of Writers Victoria, Geelong Writers Inc (Committee Member) and Bellarine Writers.

**

The Women’s Guild In the Studio
 
The women got to learn new skills in art
in writing, sculpting, poetry, and paints,
although the men could limit, on their part,
exposure to what they deemed needs constraints.
 
The men, of course, would override complaints
that their involvement in more worldly views
than those imposed on women (“due restraints”)
were arguments that they could disabuse.
 
The men, therefore, would have a broader sphere.
Their subjects, mostly goddesses and saints,
undressed, some details meant they must draw near,
though canvases would not reveal their taints.
 
Once finished, body painting would commence--
their models, from the Guild, took no offense.
 
Ken Gosse
 
Ken Gosse prefers to write rhymed, humorous verse using traditional forms. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, since then he has been in The Ekphrastic Review, Pure Slush, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Home Planet News, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years, usually with rescue dogs and cats underfoot.

**

​Exposure
 
Art is like that:
a study of over-
exposure. The
self-conscious
exploration of
vulnerability.
A naked truth.
A naked body
on exhibition.
We hungrily surround 
the subject,
the object of
our attention, 
impressed with
our obsession.
Our curiosity devours
the raw and tender
image to capture it, to 
create a likeness. We 
seek an understanding
of ourselves, a brush
of knowledge that lasts
only a moment before
we once again
let go of all we know.

Sheri Flowers Anderson

Sheri Flowers Anderson is a writer and poet based in San Antonio, Texas.  Her publication credits include Sixfold Poetry, Pensive Journal, and she's the author of a collection of poetry entitled House and Home, winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize, 2022, by Broadside Lotus Press.  She's enamored with poetry about every-day things.  When she's not writing she enjoys creating collages, playing nerdy word games like Boggle and Scrabble, and assembling 500-piece jigsaw puzzles.

**

Studio Swan Song
 
I may be the youngest in this all-female studio,
but M. Julian has asked me to apply my palette
to its truthful representation, to present at Salon.
I am thinking about the composition, putting myself
in the best light, because he did ask me to create this art,
and this may well be my way to fame.
 
First as a singer, and now as an artist, I want fame.
I can paint the halo over my own head in the studio. 
Women here hate me for my talent, naturally-gifted in this art,
while men laud me for the way I choose my color palette.
I work ten hours a day, that’s how seriously I take myself
and how much I want to bring this painting to Salon.
 
Why did I wait so long to paint, to exhibit at Salon,
when it was my clearest path to success and fame?
I doubted my gifts, loved the wrong men, didn’t believe in myself.
That is the curse of women, we can only join a female studio
and gossip all day. Not me. I mix my paints, prepare my palette,
conceptualize my approach to create my best-ever art.
 
Maybe it took the trips to Italy, to refine my appreciation for art,
Maybe it took falling out of love with Hamilton, an offer from Salon.
Maybe it took all the traveling and moving to learn nuances in palette
and experiment with life and love and hues of fame,
gain acceptance and validation in M. Julian’s studio,
or just maturing to appreciate myself.
 
Grandfather is gone, my parents are useless, there’s only myself
to trust. I know I’m going to die young. Not much time left for art.
I have to make the most of M. Julian’s requests for the studio,
give him the opportunity to showboat at Salon,
place M. Julian in the Hall of Fame
for producing such young talent with meticulous palette.
 
I choose the best blue for my dress from the palette,
paint all other artists in black to mourn myself.
This painting won’t be my last but a milestone toward fame,
because I’m already thinking about another canvassed art,
a gathering of waif boys, who owe their power to females, for Salon
and that will fill seats in the M. Julian studio.
 
How I gain fame will make art:
Palette in hand, my gift to myself
and the Salon, my final goodbye to the studio. 
 
Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has been featured in The Ekphrastic Review, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, One Art, Caesura, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in New Jersey and can be found at www.barbarakrasner.com.

**

In the Studio

Comparative writing among the arts teases our brain and challenges the senses of our talents.
 
The delicate and charming ladies engage with erstwhile ambition. 
 
The audience and enthusiasts cheer and smile without divulging their artistic choices and desires.
 
 Such beautiful ladies not needing to rely on egos or feminine wiles.
 
Searching the eyes of admirers, who are  enthralled with the mystery of their talent.
 
The tools of their art on the dusty floor-not ready to be seen.
 
Only the young and charming model  is allowed to inspire and participate.
 
While invisible absent men secretly praise and conspire what they are not allowed to view.
 
Women-known for the creative act of childbirth revel in the creation of earthly enterprise.
 
 Sandy Rochelle
 
Sandy Rochelle is  a widely published poet, actress and narrator. She narrated and produced the documentary film ARTWATCH, about renowned art historian, James Beck. She is a Voting Member of the Recording Academy in the Spoken Word Category. Her poetry has appeared in One Art,  Wild Word, Connecticut River Review, Verse Virtual, Dissident Voice, Haiku Universe, Cultural Daily, Poetic Sun, and others.​

Our new contest is Send in the Clowns! 

Write poetry or flash fiction inspired by the intriguing history circus-themed artwork. 

Click here for details.

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/new-contest-announcement-send-in-the-clowns-flash-fiction-and-poetry