this knowledge and her skill in execution as a foundation, she was able to work out her great ideas. ANECDOTES OF ROSA BONHEUR. Rosalie Marie Bonheur was born in Bordeaux, France, in 1822. Her father was a painter who had in his youth taken high honors at the exhibitions of his native town. Rosa was the eldest of four children. She was active and impetuous, and not fond of study. She disliked her books as much as she loved nature. Her chief delight was to play in the fields, to draw, and to experiment with the wet clay in her father's studio. When Rosa was seven, her father removed to Paris in the hope of improving his fortunes. When she was eleven, her mother died. Then for two years she was put to school with two of her sisters. Here her love of outdoor life led to many reprimands. Her father, having married again, apprenticed Rosa to a seamstress in order that she might learn to make a living. As we can quickly guess, this was a sort of slavery to such a girl as Rosa. When her father came to visit her, she would throw herself into his arms and beg to be taken away. Being too fond of her to see her suffer, he next found a place for her in a boarding-school. This delighted Rosa at first, for she quickly made friends and enjoyed the freedom from the work which she disliked. But it was hard for her to study. She preferred to make drawings and caricatures. of the teachers. These were well done and often colored, and the teachers, although they were obliged to punish the poor girl continually, kept them carefully in an album, where, it is said, they show them to this very day. One thing, however, clouded her pleasure while at the school: her father was still very poor, and the cheap calico dresses which Rosa was obliged to wear looked shabby beside the handsome gowns of the rich men's daughters who were her schoolmates. They had plenty of pocket-money, and the difference was very plain to the sensitive child. But it developed her character quickly. For it is said that even then she determined she would rather be something than have something." The school itself, however, was not a happy place to her, and finally her father saw that it was best to take her home. She now spent her days in her father's studio, happy in copying everything she saw him do. As long as she had a pencil or a piece of clay in her hands, she needed nothing more to amuse her. Here she began to have longings for the career that was to be hers, and the Ploughing in the Nivernais, by Rosa Bonheur. Luxembourg Gallery, Paris. restless idleness of early school-days was transformed into a life with a high purpose. Her father helped her to improve in drawing, and she, in turn, helped her father by working on the drawings which he made for publishers. So untiring was her zeal, and so rapidly did her work improve, that it was soon plain to her father that her true happiness lay in art. It was almost unheard of in those days for a woman to engage in painting. It was looked upon as unwomanly, and the friends of Bonheur did everything to dissuade him from allowing his daughter to embark upon such a career. But Rosa's own determination alone would have been hard to overcome, even if her father had not nobly stood by her. He gave her his best in the thorough training he was able to supply. He did not keep her always at work upon the drawings he so much needed to make in order to provide for his now large family, but sent her to the Louvre to copy. These copies were so good as to attract the notice of many of the people who saw them, and naturally this deepened her love of art and her ambition to succeed. In her studies she was sincere and thorough, and, like all great artists, her desire was for truth. She was fond of all kinds of animals, and her studio and home were always full of them. When success came, her greatest happiness was in sharing it with her father, whose encouragement had been everything to her. Every one knows that Rosa Bonheur sometimes donned the clothing worn by men, and at the time she was living and working, many people were ready to say that she did it to attract attention. Now that she is dead, and the petty jealousies that her success caused are forgotten, she is no longer censured for this. When she planned her great picture, "The Horse Fair," she knew she would have to make her sketches in and about the horse markets and on step-ladders, and she decided to wear men's clothes for convenience. She was a woman of great power and ability, and her costume helped her work, by making it easier for her to go about. She should not be judged in the same way as we would judge any one who might do it merely to be peculiar. In 1855, she visited England, where her work had made her famous. She had now received honors and acquired fortune. She moved from one studio in Paris to a larger and a larger one, as her requirements and wealth increased, until finally she purchased a fine estate at By (pronounced Bee), near the forest of Fontainebleau, where she could find settings for her pictures in endless variety. At this château, surrounded by Newfoundlands, Spaniels, St. Bernards, sheep, goats, cows, lions, boars, rare birds, deer, gazelles, elk, indeed a menagerie of animals for models, she was destined to live for nearly fifty years. Here she led a happy life, rich in honors, retired from the world, receiving only a few intimate friends now and then, and, as she herself said, "working my very best." A LITTLE GALLERY OF ROSA BONHEUR'S PAINTINGS The Horse Fair.. Plowing in the Nivernais. .Metropolitan Museum, New York. Metropolitan Museum, New York. Private Collection. Wallace Collection, London. N རྒྱ |