Marie Bashkirtseff was a Russian diarist and sculptor. Bashkirtseff lived and worked in Paris for many years, died at age 25. Bashkirtseff was born Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva in Gavrontsi near Poltava to a wealthy noble family, but her parents separated when she was quite young; as a result, she grew up abroad, traveling with her mother throughout most of Europe, with longer spells in Germany and on the Riviera, until the family settled in Paris. Educated and with early musical talent, she lost her chance at a career as a singer when illness destroyed her voice, she determined to become an artist, she studied painting in France at the Robert-Fleury studio and at the Académie Julian. The Académie, as one of the few establishments that accepted female students, attracted young women from all over Europe and the United States. Fellow students at the Académie included Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowiczowa and Louise Breslau, whom Bashkirtseff viewed as her only real rival. Bashkirtseff would go on to produce a remarkable, if conventional, body of work in her short lifetime, exhibiting at the Paris Salon as early as 1880 and every year thereafter until her death.

In 1884, she exhibited a portrait of Paris slum children entitled The Meeting and a pastel portrait of her cousin, for which she received an honorable mention. Bashkirtseff's best-known works are The Meeting and her 1881 In the Studio, a portrait of her fellow artists at work. Although a large number of Bashkirtseff's works were destroyed by the Nazis during World War II, at least 60 survive. In 2000, a U. S. touring exhibition entitled "Overcoming All the Obstacles: The Women of Academy Julian" featured works by Bashkirtseff and her schoolmates. As a painter, Bashkirtseff took her cue from her friend Jules Bastien-Lepage's admiration for realism and naturalism. Where Bastien-Lepage had found his inspiration in nature, Bashkirtseff turned to the urban scene, writing, "I say nothing of the fields because Bastien-Lepage reigns over them as a sovereign. Bastien." By unlucky chance, both artists succumbed prematurely to chronic illness in the same year, the pages of Bashkirtseff's journal record her visits to the dying painter.

Dying of tuberculosis at the age of 25, Bashkirtseff lived just long enough to emerge as an intellectual in Paris in the 1880s. She wrote several articles for Hubertine Auclert's feminist newspaper La Citoyenne in 1881 under the nom de plume "Pauline Orrel." One of her most-quoted sayings is "Let us love dogs, let us love only dogs! Men and cats are unworthy creatures." Bashkirtseff died in Paris in 1884, she is buried in Cimetière de Passy, Paris. Her great friend Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch was present at her deathbed, her monument is a full-sized artist's studio, declared a historic monument by the government of France. Marie Bashkirtseff was included in the 2018 exhibit Women in Paris 1850-1900” From the age of 13, Bashkirtseff kept a journal, it is for this that she is most famous today, it has been called "a strikingly modern psychological self-portrait of a young, gifted mind," and her urgent prose, which breaks out into dialogue, remains readable. She was multilingual and despite her self-involvement, was a keen observer with an acute ear for hypocrisy, so that her journal offers a near-novelistic account of the late nineteenth century European bourgeoisie.

A consistent theme throughout her journal 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 toward 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. Similarly: "When I am dead, my life, which appears to me a remarkable one, will be read.." 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, was only the second diary by a woman published in France to that date, 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, published in 1862. An English translation appeared two years under the title Marie Bashkirtseff: The Journal of a Young Artist 1860–1884.

Translated by Mary J. Serrano, it was abridged and bowdlerized, her relatives seeing to it that a good deal of material they considered unflattering to the family was removed. British Prime Minister William Gladstone referred to her journal as "a book without a parallel", another early admirer was George Bernard Shaw; the late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing read the original French version over eight days in June 1890. It remained popular 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 and it was mentioned as a model by writers who became known for their diaries, including Pierre Louÿs, Katherine Mansfield, Anais Nin. Her letters, consisting of her correspondence with the writer Guy de Maupassant (which she had begun under an assumed n

The International Road Traffic and Accident Database is a data collection maintained by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Transport Forum in Paris, covering safety data in countries within and outside of Europe. The database was started in 1988 in Federal Institution for Roads in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, in response to demands for international comparative data, it has grown to be an important resource in comparing road safety metrics between various developed countries. At present 37 countries are included: Argentina, Austria, Cambodia, Chile, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States; the following statistics are available for general use: Road user deaths by age, road network area or road use Traffic accidents with personal injuries by road network area IRTAD site

The Château de Castelnou is a medieval castle in the commune of Castelnou in the French département of Pyrénées-Orientales. The village of Castelnou takes its name from the castle; the Latin castellum novum became in Catalan castell nou, the "new castle". From 990, the castle served as the military capital of the Viscount of Vallespir, its irregular pentagonal plan follows the rocky outcrop on which it was built, this elevated position providing defence against enemy attacks. The castle was taken by the troops of James II of Majorca en 1286, again in 1483. Demolished in 1559, it was no longer restored or inhabited and deteriorated throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. At the time of the French Revolution it became the property of the commune, it was sold to Viscount Satgé in 1875 and, by 1900, had become again an elegant and habitable fortress. It was acquired in 1946 by Charles-Emmanuel Brousse, married to Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, a famed American spy. Having been ravaged by a terrible fire, in 1987 it has since been restored.

List of castles in France Château de Castelnou - official site Official Castelnou website Parts of this article were translated from the French Wikipedia article fr:Castelnou and from this version