Artist’s Studio: 5 Paintings

Artists’ studios are curious places. Part domestic and part commercial, they can be viewed as an extension of the artistic process itself and function as a kind of self-portraits where we can observe the reflection of an artist’s mind. But, how have artists depicted these spaces in art? Have they portrayed them as sacred abodes where geniuses dwell and labour, or presented them as tattered lodgings of talented, but increasingly hopeless, desperate and poor individuals? Below are five paintings of artists’ studios (in no particular order). Some are idealised versions, while others poke fun at the messiness and misunderstanding of artistic creativity. *The header image is a fragment of an illustration by Anton Pieck. In the Studio [1881] by Marie Bashkirtseff In the Studio by Marie Bashkirtseff Marie Bashkirtseff (1860-84), born Maria Bashkirtseva into a Russian noble family, was an émigré artist who lived and worked in Paris. In her art, she was inspired by naturalism and realism, but she also wrote and her coming-of-age diary gained success after its publication, with its admirers being such people as William Gladstone and George Bernard Shaw. Bashkirtseff died of tuberculosis at t...