Marie Bashkirtseff was a Ukrainian diarist, painter and sculptor. From around the age of 13, Bashkirtseff kept a journal, and it is for this that she is probably most famous today. It has been called "a strikingly modern psychological self-portrait of a young, gifted mind," and her urgent prose, which occasionally breaks out into dialogue, remains extremely readable. She was multilingual and despite her self-involvement was a keen observer with an acute ear for hypocrisy, so that her journal also offers a near-novelistic account of the late 19th century European bourgeoisie. A consistent theme throughout is her deep desire to achieve fame, inflected by her increasing fear that her intermittent illnesses might turn out to be tuberculosis. In a prefatory section written towards the end of her life in which she recounts her family history, she writes, "If I do not die young I hope to live as great artist; but if I die young, I intend to have my journal, which cannot fail to be interesting, published. Similarly: "When I am dead, my life, which appears to me a remarkable one, will be read. (The only thing wanting is that it should have been different)." In effect, the first half of Bashkirtseff's journal is a coming-of-age story while the second is an account of heroic suffering.

Bashkirtseff's journal was first published in 1887, and was only the second diary by a woman ever published in France. It was an immediate success, not least because its cosmopolitan confessional style was a marked departure from the contemplative, mystical diaries of the writer Eugénie de Guérin that had been published in 1862. An English translation appeared two years later under the title Marie Bashkirtseff: The Journal of a Young Artist 1860-1884. Translated by Mary J. Serrano, it was heavily abridged and bowdlerized, her relatives seeing to it that a good deal of material unflattering to the family was removed. British Prime Minister William Gladstone referred to it as "a book without a parallel,", and another early admirer was George Bernard Shaw. It remained popular, eventually spinning off both plays and movies based on her life story, including The Affairs of Maupassant, directed by Henry Koster and released in the United States in 1938. Her diary was cited as an inspiration by the American writer Mary MacLane, whose own shockingly confessional diary was written a bare generation later, and it was also mentioned as a model by later writers who became known for their diaries, including Pierre Louÿs, Katherine Mansfield, and Anais Nin.

This marble bust was sculpted by Charles René de Paul de Saint-Marceaux (23 September 1845 — 23 April 1915) a French sculptor. He was born in Reims and at age eighteen went to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts. A student of François Jouffroy, he became primarily a sculptor of portrait busts and animals. He exhibited at the Paris salon from 1868, when, passing up the competition for the Prix de Rome, he decided to spend time in Florence instead. He passed a second sojourn in Italy in 1873-74. On his return, his marbleGénie gardant le secret de la tombe ("Spirit Guarding the Secret of the Tomb"), conserved in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, shows the marked influence of Michelangelo.

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