Photo By Gail

Marie Bashkirtseff (1858 – 1884) was one of the most outspoken and persistent advocates for a woman’s art academy in Paris. The dynamic scene on In The Studio (1881) depicts the artist (foreground, tipping her palette forward) alongside her peers at the Académie Julian as they work from a draped male model. Founded by Rodolphe Julian in 1868, the Académie originally permitted men and women to work side by side from a live nude model, but as news of assumed impropriety spread, Julian created separate studios for men and women. Julian’s school  was one of a handful in Paris to provide women with rigorous artistic training. Dying of tuberculosis at the age of 25, Bashkirtseff lived just long enough to emerge as an intellectual in Paris in the 1880s.

Photographed as Part of The Exhibit Women Artists In Paris at The Clark Institute, Located in Williamstown, Massachusetts.