The 19th century society was constricting a woman's freedom and independence by highlighting the insuperable differences between sexes, i.e. her inferiority to a man. Women were considered as intellectually weaker and destined to a role of a mother and a housewife and when they fought for a right to work and started to contribute like men did, they were exploited. In the world of art they also encountered resistence- they didn't have a right to enroll in Academy and didn't have access to a proper education, which led to not being taken seriously by their contemporaries and not being available on the prestigeous Salon exhibitions. Rodolphe Julian opened his Academy's door for them by opening a separate atelier and one of the famous students, Marie Bashkirtseff, wrote about the conditions of the work. Through her records it is possible to track her artistic work while studying at Julian's, the processes of preparations for the Salon and all her aspirations, ups and downs od the road to her artistic achievement. She wrote about the artists that were her role models, thrilled when having received praise and in despair when being criticised. She created a series of paintings of exceptional quality with clear realism tendencies and apprecciated the imitation of nature and themes that were prefered by the members of the juste milieu group. During the period from her enrollment at the Julian Academy and her last exhibition at the Salon she showed a remarkable progress that was unfortunately interrupted by the premature death.