The Mother passed her final examinations at school when she was fifteen. She then joined an art studio where she devoted eight hours a day to painting.The name of the institution to which the studio belonged is not mentioned in her recorded talks or in any available documents. However, it can be inferred with reasonable certainty from several facts.
     First, the prevalent idea that the Mother studied at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts, the French national school of fine arts, must be dismissed since women were not admitted there until 1897 . The Mother finished her art schooling and married in that year. Prior to 1897, it appears that the only place in Paris where women could study painting seriously was the Academie Julian.
     This institution was founded by Rodolphe Julian in 1868, grew rapidly until its founder's death in 1907, and continued to exist unti11959. By the 1890s the Academie possessed several studios in Paris, including some for women. The young Russian, Marie Bashkirtseff, who entered one of the first ateliers for women in 1877 and left a vivid account of it, chose the Academie Julian because it was "the only serious art school for a woman". Rodolphe Julian believed that women could equal men in the arts and sciences, and he implemented this principle in his school. For this reason among others, he was hailed as "a revolutionary in the field of artistic education" and even regarded as a father of the feminist movement.
     The professors chosen by Julian were highly qualified. All accounts of the Academie refer to the rigorous traditional training imparted there, combined with an encouragement of individuality within the limits of the general style that was taught. The Julian teachers sought to inculcate in the students especiallya love and understanding of nature and an honest expression of their own perception. On the technical side, there was an emphasis on drawing and a resistance to new trends which revelled in pure colour and pattern. The Mother's paintings and drawings certainly attest to her having received the kind of thorough classical training offered by the Academie Julian, though she soon went beyond the formulas of the French "academic" style.
      It may be noted that Julian was particular about providing living models in his studios. The Academie held monthly competitions for prizes, in which both men and women of the various studios competed on an equal basis. The Mother was probably referring to one of these competitions when she said she had won a first prize in Paris for a still-life painting of hers.

   Though we have no record of the Mother mentioning the name of the art school she attended, she described its organisation in a manner that points unmistakably to the Academie Julian. In a talk by one of her granddaughters based on notes gathered in the course of conversations with the Mother, the following statement occurs:
            " At the age of fifteen or sixteen, she was going every day to a studio to learn painting. There was a teacher who came twice a week to see what the students had done. He was a man who had opened several studios like that in Paris, and there was a monitress, a woman of twenty-four or twenty-five years, who was there as supervisor ."
            In the 1890s, as far as we know, there was only one man who had opened several art studios in Paris, namely, Rodolphe Julian. The above account does contain a minor discrepancy with what is known of the operation of Julian's studios, but it is a detail which does not alter the definite impression that the Academie Julian is meant. The teacher who came twice a week would not have been the man who had opened the studios, namely, Julian himself. In the beginning, Julian had supervised the activities of his workshops, but ''as the Academie expanded, he withdrew from close personal contact with most of the students" . It must have been one of his professors who came twice a week to criticise the students' work. This agrees with an account of Julian's Academie in the 1880s which speaks of the professors visiting twice a week.
            In Julian's studios, "management of the ateliers was delegated to the 'massier' or 'massiere'[student in charge] who was either elected or chosen by Julian." This was the monitress referred to above. The Mother was friendly with the girl who was monitress of the studio she attended, and once saved her from being dismissed on false charges. The above quotation introduces one version of this story. Another version is worth quoting in full for the glimpse it provides of the Mother's unusual strength of character even at this age:
            In her sixteenth year she joined a Studio to learn painting. It was one of the biggest studios in Paris. She happened to be the youngest there. All the other people used to talk and quarrel among themselves, but she never took part in these things--she was always grave and busy with her work. They called her the Sphinx. Whenever they had any trouble or wrangle, they would come to her to settle their affairs. She could read their thoughts and, as she replied more often to their thoughts than to their words, they felt very uncomfortable. She would also make her decisions without the least fear, even if the authorities were concerned. Once a girl who had been appointed monitress of the Studio got into the bad books of the elderly lady who was the Head of the place. This lady wanted to send away the monitress. So the Sphinx was sought out by the young woman for help. She felt sympathy for the girl, knowing how poor she was and that if she left the place it would be the end of her painting career. The Head of the Studio had now to confront a determined little champion. Sensible pleading was first tried, but when it fell on deaf ears the champion took another line. With a bit of anger she caught the elderly woman's hand and held it in a firm grip as if the very bones would be crushed. It was soon agreed that the monitress would be allowed to stay on. Mahakali had been at work again.
           The Mother said little about her years as an art student; of the little she said, almost nothing relates to art. As with all of her early life, one can only glean stray details from passing remarks, but these cannot often be dated with any precision. We know that she took a trip to Italy with her mother when she was fifteen. They had relatives there, since her mother's sister had married an Italian. It may be assumed that this visit was a stimulating one for the Mother s developing artistic sensitivity .She mentions that she painted in St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, but this may have been on a subsequent trip to Italy. She said about Venice: "The cathedrals are so beautiful there! Oh, it is so magnificent!"
           It was undoubtedly during her years of concentrated work in the studio that the Mother matured from a gifted child into an accomplished artist. But she had no ambition for fame or a successful career. Nor was art itself her single all-absorbing preoccupation. She always spoke of it as one part of the many- sided growth in consciousness which was taking place in these years. The spirit in which she studied may be inferred from what she said later about Art and Yoga:
            "The discipline of Art has at its centre the same principle as the discipline of Yoga. In both the aim is to become more and more conscious; in both you have to learn to see and feel something that is beyond the ordinary vision and feeling, to go within and bring out from there deeper things. Painters have to follow a discipline for the growth of the consciousness of their eyes, which in itself is almost aY oga. If they are true artists and try to see beyond and use their art for the expression of the inner world, they grow in consciousness by this concentration, which is not other than the consciousness given by Yoga."

see also

Early Art Studies

Life among Artists

Théon and Algeria

Sojourn in Japan

Pondicherry
The Later Paintings and Drawings