At the end of the 19th century, women could cultivate themselves, admire and copy works of art, but were deemed incapable of creating.

And in the French capital, the beating heart of the avant-garde, where the École des Beaux-Arts was reserved for men, it was a young Ukrainian aristocrat who tackled a taboo in the most progressive circles: male domination. When Marie Bashkirtseff, aged just twenty-five, exhibited this painting at the Salon of 1884, the critics were so enthusiastic that they wrongly claimed that its author could only be her mentor Jules Bastien-Lepage. Six schoolchildren, defiant and rough, talk gravely about a mysterious case that will require their attention. At the very moment when school becomes compulsory and the right of association is guaranteed by law. Our gaze, however, is caught by the graceful silhouette of the exiled girl at the edge of the picture, about to disappear.

With her braid, her white ruff. No face. She seems to personify Marie in particular and the cause of women in general.

Marie herself would die a few months later, mortified by the lack of official recognition for this final painting, which she knew, with its deep blacks and shades of gray, approached the sober refinement and strength of the palette of Caillebotte and Manet.