In the Fog

In the autumn of 1910 a newly founded society, the Association of Austrian Women Artists, opened its first exhibition at the Vienna Secession, a survey of women painters across the centuries. Marie Bashkirtseff, who had died in 1884, was among them, and her diary, published after her death, had made her a model for many young artists. The association bought this small canvas and gave it to the Modern Gallery, the forerunner of today's Belvedere. She painted it in 1882 on the edge of Paris. A broad street curves away into a fog that softens a pointed spire and the houses behind a fenced yard, where horses stand beside a cart. Lamp posts, a few dark figures and a walker under an umbrella are the only signs of life, apart from a small orange flame whose smoke drifts across the middle of the scene.