A RECORD IN JEALOUSY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3803, 1 February 1927, Page 76

A RECORD IN JEALOUSY.

There is nothing in the famous “Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff more amazing than the space and venom she lavished on her fellow-student at Julian’s art school in the ’seventies. Louise Breslau— “cette canaille de Breslau,” and one may be permitted to speculate if the unhappy Marie (who reposes long since in Passy Cemetery) would not have fairly exploded and joined the atoms had she lived to read the universal praise that has latterly been bestowed on this same Breslau in connection with the exhibition of the latter’s works in Paris. Strangely unreal it is, too, that Mlle. Louise Breslau should still be among us, and working • so long long ago does Marie Bashkirtseff seem to have passed on. the brilliant Russian girl, who excelled at music, painting, and literature (not to mention sculpture), and who caused Gladstone to herald her as the mother of the emancipated young lady of the age, would only have been sixty-seven had she been alive to-day, instead of dying, as she did, at the age of four-and-twenty from consumption of the throat in 1884. There can be nothing in literature quite like these ‘Breslau entries” in the famous Bashkirtseff diary, entries penned by a girl who knew she was doomed, yet who yearned feverishly— savagely—to be the first in the drawing and painting classes at Julian s while strength still remained to her. And, above all, vearned to beat that accursed Breslau ! After only fifteen days in the atelier, Marie is writing:— Breslau has been working here f.wo rears, bhe is twenty; I, seventeen. But she'drew a lot before coming here; and miserable I only fifteen days at work! How Breslau draws well! •

That was in October, 1877, and times without number this same calculation* is worked out in all kinds of ways to the 5.-is fact ion, or more often the reverse, of Marie. The days, the very hours, running into thousands, of advantage Breslau had over her are all set down:— That canaille Breslau worries me. She is admirably organised, and I assure you she wnl get there. She has studied fifteen times as ... nu ’ ch as 1 have. Still, in six months I will a raw like her.

One December day there is a positive explosion of envy and despair at some enormous success” of Marie’s bc-te noire, followed by the customary statistics and calculations, feverish hopes, and equally fe\ ered regrets for time lost in gallivantin' l about Europe with her family, leading the aimless, fashionable round—years which in this wonder-girl’s life, were, alas, never to be redeemed. Year after year according to the Journal, Breslau somecalled “la Suissesse” (she came from Zurich), dominates Marie’s thoughts, as she continued to do, in fact, until almost the end, when illness and a nasscent love for Bastien Lepage (who died beside tlie dying Marie, having been carried thither at Marie’s request) calmed the wild young Russian girl, and seemed to make her almost gentle and kindiv disposed. Long before that, however, Marie had broken with the girl whose prowess with pencil and brush so tortured her, the first split occurring i n May, 1878, as the result of Breslau, as senior,' ordering Marie to take a back seat in the atelier, as she had come late. One can well imagine the effect of that order, coming, above all, from Breslau! A few days later the compiler of the Journal is complaining that Breslau ha J stolen one of her ideas for a head. That finished things; the next a ff ec ti n g “la Suissesse” commences : Since my rupture with Breslau.” In the same month comes this prophetic line : I am jealous of Breslau, who doesn't draw a bit like a man. Breslau will be a great artist, a really great one.

e , re follows statistics favourable to Marie s chance of overhauling the hated one.

On November 9, 1878, there is a long entry concluding: “All this to announce with much pomp that the masters tell me I draw as well as Breslau!” Yet this, even if her masters didn’t sav it to humour her, which is highly probable, onlyspurred Marie to catch up Breslau in painting—which she certainly never did. An entirely new basis of time-calculation is adopted for this branch, as a result of which Marie decides she has got to work double the time Breslau does in order to make up the leeway. Here are other typical entries of the relentless pursuit at this period, a consuming effort which undoubtedly beckoned Marie’s premature end more rapidly than it would normally have come:—

. Breslau has painted a cheek so natural and true that I, a woman, and rival artist, would like to kiss that cheek!

I am terrified of Breslau’s future. I am weighed down, triate. I think six months will suffice to catch up Breslau (in painting). She will assuredly be an extraordinary woman. ... a bizarre mixture, if bizarrerie were not so common nowadays. If ever Julian or Tonv Fleury praised Breslau s work at the atelier, Marie would contort herself that night with rage and tears, her only periods of rest reallv being when ‘la Suissesse” decamped a-paintin" to Brittany. ° One day in 1879, Marie gave an orange to a Spanish girl standing beside Breslau, whereupon the senorita handed on half to the Swiss, saving: “Take it. It doesn’t come from Mlle. 8., but from me.” Breslau hesitated, whereupon Marie turned to her rival and added-: “I offer it you.” Both girls coloured ; after which there was this exchange of compliments: — Breslau: “I don’t care a fig for you!” Marie: “Nor I for you! But if vou didn’t worry about me you wouldn't have gone ao red.” Breslau: "I don’t care a fig for myself either!” Marie: “There you are right.” “Things growing tender,” comments Marie, “I then said outright: ‘I admire

you!’ ‘Me?’ said Breslau, amazed. ‘You.’ ‘Parbleu !’ opined Breslau, and turned on her heel.” Those were the last words the two were ever destined to exchange, though for three years more Marie, at least, kept on worrying herself to death about Breslau, “the eternal comparison.” ( In on e entry', Marie actually buries this "written envy ’ even if that passion racked her head and heart to the end. In May, 1881, when she knows she is under sentence of death, and is laid up, Marie hears that the jury at the Salon paid great attention to Breslau’s exhibit: — Torrents of great hot tears streamed down my face. My parents thought it was what the. doctor said to me. A profusion of great silent tears and I cannot tell them the truth—that it was Breslau’s picture! Again : — Breslau is my constant preoccupation. I don t give a touch with the brush without thinking how she would do it, or how she would like it. In December, 1881, the agonised girl writes at Nice, where “one lung lias been freed” : — I don’t dare ask a single question about the atelier lest they tell me what Breslau is doing. Oh, God, hear me! Give me strength, have pity on me!

The year 1882, when Marie was herself thrilling to her first Salon success, “Le Meeting” (which hangs in the Luxembourg), produced only two references to' Breslau, yet the nature of these showed that the old burning envy endured, and that Breslau’s absence from the Journal was exclusively pursuant to its authoress’s determination not to consume her fastwaning strength in writing about “la Suissesse.” In Apr.il, 1883, both Marie and Breslau are “hanging” in the Salon, but Breslau again wins—follow statistics showing she won’t do so next time. What, in the forty-two years that have passed since that entry, has this Breslau become? Louise Breslau, at seventy, is the accepted leading feminine exponent in Paris of “the old school,” faithful to the portrayal of the human form and features as they- really are. Her recent exhibition of a hundred paintings and pastels—she shows very rarely, once every three or four years, and leads the most modest, retiring existence—demonstrates her to be still a fine craftswoman and psychological portrait-painter—as paintings of Anatole France, near the end, and the air "ace,” Guynemer, testify. All through these hectic years of Futurism and Cubism and Dadaism and Van Dongenism and the like, Louise Breslau has been content to pursue the even tenor of her own art, never becoming in the least contaminated, and developing to the full the lessons she learnt in her youth. As I write, I see her again seated by her exhibition, humbly bowing as glowing adjectives descend upon her and her work: —

“Ravissante!” “Superbe!” “Quelle grande artiste!” Marie, Marie, in your mausoleum a stone’s-throw from the Eiffel Tower; Marie, Marie, with your very own studio recreated lifesize above you, for all to see, even to your old palette and picture of Bastien Lepage, do you hear those words? —Ferdinand Tuohy, in John 0’ London’s Weekly.