A meeting

Born into a bourgeois Ukrainian family, Marie Bashkirtseef grew up through the many trips to Europe she began in her childhood. She decides to train in painting in Paris, at the Académie Julian, where she will meet her great rival, Louise Catherine Breslau. 

Her work remains very controversial and the opinions of the artists she meets are very divided. Her daring personality and her feminist demands push her to write a diary which she keeps to document, analyze and fix her life, going so far as to expose herself by describing her desires and her revolts. In her work, she represents popular figures of Paris, on whom she casts a distant gaze that appeals to the bourgeoisie, which contrasts with the avant-gardes of the time who remained clinging to representations of their worldly and intimate life. 

In “A meeting”, she paints six young boys, who create by their position a circle around an object which is difficult to identify, but which could be the subject of their meeting. The clothes they wear reflect their social condition, also amplified by the decor of a fairly clean street. This painting is one of the last works exhibited by the artist, who died a few months later of tuberculosis, at the age of 25.