Berthe and Jeanna were both European painters born in the 1840’s. Although Berthe was a Dane and Jeanna a Swede, they managed to work together, study together, travel together, and—for long stretches of time—live together. They left a trove of letters, dating from the 1880’s to the 1920’s. But, more to the point, they left us their paintings of each other. And these are packed with codes of lesbian resistance.

But before I talk about these paintings and what they mean to me, let’s set the stage. This was the first generation of European women artists who had a real shot at becoming professional painters, because, prior to the mid-19th century, women had been denied access to all the traditional pipelines for advancement in the arts. There were, of course, the lucky few whose fathers were professional artists open-minded or financially strapped enough to train and apprentice their daughters. Grateful as we are to the Rosa Bonheurs and the Artemisia Gentileschis who won the parentage lottery, this does not mitigate the cultural loss from generations of unrealized female genius.
Berthe and Jeanna, like many artists in Europe, were restless… There was this exhilarating movement coming out of France called “Impressionism.” The Impressionists were going outside and painting “en plein air.” Instead of cursing the fickleness of the elements, they actually celebrated the transitory effects of sunlight in their art through the rapid use of “broken” brush strokes, sometimes with unmixed pigments, making no attempt to blend. The immediacy of their startlingly vibrant paintings marked a radical departure from tradition.
There was also an interesting group of artists in Italy, the “Macchiaioli” painters. Influenced by the Impressionists, they were focused on the play of light and shadow, considering this contrast to be the major component of a painting.
Jeanna and Berthe began working en plein air and traveling to Italy for painting trips. In fact, Jeanna would come to be known for her landscapes.
But before we consider those Paris years… who were Berthe and Jeanna, really?
Helen Thorell, a fellow painter who lived in the same guesthouse, wrote this about meeting Jeanna:
"Jeanna Bauck is one of the most adorable people I have met in my life. The first impression, i.e. her appearance is not appealing—she looks like a student with her short hair, but that similarity disappears as soon as you talk to her. She seems exceptionally mild, bright, modest and always with bon courage. She is 39 years old, which I almost could not believe, but she told me today. She is awaiting an intimate friend and moreover a prominent painter from Munich, Miss Wegmann, Danish, who will also be living here… I almost dare to say that Jeanna and I have already become good friends."
But for now, they are together, and Paris was the place for early career painters. Achieving recognition for one’s work in Paris carried significant weight in cities outside of France, and Jeanna and Berthe were keen to make their mark. The biggest flex was having a painting accepted into the annual Salon, the official, two-hundred-year-old exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The Académie itself was closed to women, but anyone could submit their work to the judges.
But before I talk about that miracle of a portrait, I want to set the scene:
Here are these are two brilliantly gifted painters in the early years of their career. The portrait is set in their studio... that most precious, rare, coveted, sacred, and sanctified “room of one’s own.” The artist Marie Bashkirtseff, a contemporary, had this to say about studios:
"In the studio, everything disappears, you don’t have a name, no family; you are no longer the daughter of your mother, you are yourself, you are an individual and you have art in front of you and nothing else. You are so happy, so free, so proud."
And this is a studio in Paris. And, most exciting of all, Jeanna and Berthe are middle-class women on the adventure of a lifetime, living "comme les garçons." That’s a French expression that has become an English idiom, meaning “as the boys do.” Berthe and Jeanna are living without chaperones or family, renting rooms in an arts district. They are taking their painting seriously—professionally… comme les garçons. They walk the streets alone or with other young women, they go out at night, they do as they please… comme les garçons.
And their Paris studio is the setting of The Artist Jeanna Bauck.
To me, it’s obviously some kind of sacred grove or temple. There is a massive vine across the top of the canvas, creating a bower effect. There has been no attempt to tame this plant, and it appears to be taking over the space. The leaves are not arranged for effect; they follow their own inclination, crowding toward the light from the window. The overarching presence of this vine suggests that the outdoors is either moving indoors, or perhaps the indoors is in the process of returning to nature.
And what is our goddess doing amid all these tilting planes, underneath the undomesticated vine and that radiant nimbus of unruly hair? Well, clearly, she has been interrupted. We know this, because she has just closed her book, keeping a finger in it to mark the page.
Now, look… I am a lesbian who owes her life to books. Helen Keller put it perfectly: “Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends.” And because I am a lesbian who loves books, I notice art that combines women and books. Don’t judge. And yes, apparently it is “a thing.” There is the 1903 marble monument to the Empress Elisabeth “Sisi” of Austria in Merano, Italy.
And she does something else that is very comme les garçons: She crosses her legs. In 1881, ladies only crossed their ankles. Leg-crossing was the exclusive purview of males, at least in portraiture. But here’s the thing: Jeanna isn’t posing. That’s the point. Like the vine leaves over her head, Jeanna arranges herself as suits her nature. Just as they grow toward the light, so she leans forward toward the object of her affection. And in return, the painter is capturing an image of her lover being herself, because... what could be more beautiful?

She does have something on a gold chain hanging from her neck, but on closer inspection, one can see that it’s a “notebook necklace.” These were very small notebooks with gold or silver covers, usually with a writing implement fastened to one of the sides. Without pockets or cellphones, a notebook necklace was handy for keeping track of appointments, addresses, and errand lists. It signifies, again, a working woman. So… a watch and a notebook… but what about jewelry?
Jeanna is, in fact, wearing a wedding ring and an engagement ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, a signifier of marital status since Roman times. She is showing us that she is a married… married, but yet not a wife--comme les garçons.
Berthe and Jeanna have married each other in secret and now they are telling the world without telling the world.
The Artist Jeanna Bauck is a painting bursting with lesbian joy, pride, love of self, love of studio, love of independence, love of the painter who is painting her, love of life, of spring, of art, of the world. I look at this painting, I look at the eyes of Jeanna, and I say, “Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes… Oh, yes!”

Back in Bertha’s hometown, however, the reception was decidedly different. In 1881, she wrote this in a letter to a fellow artist back in Paris: “My studies, and Jeanna’s portrait simply have no luck here, they look at them dumbfounded, and there is no one that comprehends one whit of my painting.” A year later, she wrote, “I despise the Danes with their philistinism, which pervades all their manners and tastes. Would you believe they found Jeanna’s portrait to be “flighty and wild”, this means to say as much as in Swedish “rusket” [unruly] and for the sole reason that she is not sitting neatly combed in a chair with her hands tidily in her lap, as in all their other portraits.”
I’m not sure that Bertha’s assessment of these Danish critiques is accurate. I remember when I was first coming out, I had a crush on a lesbian actor who identified as butch. Intrigued, I asked her, “What is ‘butch’?” She answered me with bitterness: “Nobody can tell you, but everybody knows it when they see it.” I have never forgotten that, and I believe that the good people of Copenhagen, standing in front of The Artist Jeanna Bauck, knew exactly what they were seeing. And, unfortunately, their judgement fell more heavily on Jeanna than on the woman who painted her. The portrait was controversial enough outside of Paris to raise questions about Jeanna’s professionalism.
And so it was, four years later, Berthe would set out to make a second portrait of her beloved—one that would silence the critics. By then, the women had left their student days behind. Jeanna was back in Munich, supporting a mother and sister, where she had founded a school for women artists, and Berthe had returned to Copenhagen. In 1885, seeking medical treatment for rheumatism and anemia, Berthe was temporarily in Dresden, and Jeanna came to take care of her. It was during this time that Berthe painted the Portrait of Jeanna Bauck.
Art historian Frances Borzello talks about how the female artist has traditionally had to use self-portraiture to reconcile “the conflict between what society expected of women and what it expected of artists.” ("Comme il faut" versus "comme les garçons?") According to Borzello:
“The problem for women – and the challenge – was that these two sets of expectations were diametrically opposed. The answer was a creative defensiveness. It is only through understanding the women’s desire to out-maneuver the critics by anticipating their responses that one can begin to make sense of why their self-portraits look as they do.”

Now, there is one small signifier: the pince-nez glasses. In 1885 ladies preferred the lorgnette, a pair of glasses with a long handle that could be held in front of one’s eyes. The lorgnette was impractical for reading anything more taxing than the hallmark on the bottom of a china cup. That Jeanette has pince-nez indicates that she does close work (writing, reading, or painting) for extended periods of time. It’s a mark of professionalism, and, of course, comme les garçons.
But this nothing to the masterpiece that is Jeanna's face. Jeanna is not a client or a model, sitting for a portrait, arranging her expression for the painter. She is a women who is looking at her lover of two decades, her lover who has made a painful career move back to her native country, away from Munich and away from Paris. She is looking at her lover who is unwell and who is painting, not in a studio, but in a borrowed, inadequately lit room.
This is the mature look of a woman who has had to make and to accept painful concessions in her art and in her life. In fact, this entire portrait represents a concession. Jeanna is struggling financially, while Berthe’s career in Copenhagen is so successful, she is turning down portrait commissions almost every week. If this portrait is good enough, it will hang in the Paris Salon, as a testimony to Jeanna’s professionalism.
But there is something else. Jeanna is sitting for this portrait, because Berthe has been sick, too sick to paint, and this is a project that has revived her interest in painting. And so, Jeanna is wearing tight, expensive, and uncomfortable clothing, as a concession to her long-distance lover who believes that a bourgeois portrait is all it will take to bring acceptance and recognition to an obvious lesbian. Jeanna’s face, full of tenderness, fatigue, and resignation, says it all. She is indulging her lover.
This portrait fills me with something more profound than joy. It fills me a lesbian truth about loving women in a patriarchal world.
Why would an artist, intending to focus her attention for days or even weeks on a project, choose such an unattractive prop? Her subject is certainly dressed to impress. Why this monstrosity?
I have to conclude the chair is intentional. As intentional as the display of the wedding rings in the earlier portrait. The chair was at hand, that’s all. It was there, so they used it. The chair is an artifact from the non-art, non-lesbian world... the one that would dissipate our spiritual forces with the acquisition manipulation of trivial things. The entire painting is a masquerade, except for Jeanna's face, which is magnificent.
And here is Audre Lorde again… “It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.”