Black and white photograph of Maria Bashkirtseva

Marie Bashkirtseff

(1858 - 1884)

Marie Bashkirtseff exhibited paintings at the Paris Salon for the first time in 1880. Five months before dying of tuberculosis, she fretted in her journal about the possibility of being “carried away by some swift disease…If I should not live long enough to win renown, this journal will interest the psychologists; for it is curious, at least—the life of a woman, traced day by day, without affectation.” Her journals were published in 1887, prompting British prime minister William Gladstone to call the author a “true genius.”

All Writing

If I had been born a man, I would have conquered Europe. As I was born a woman, I exhausted my energy in tirades against fate and in eccentricities.

—Marie Bashkirtseff, 1884

Voices In Time

1876 | Nice

Paths to Glory

Marie Bashkirtseff’s dramatic teenage diary.More

Issues Contributed