: Rosa Bonheur by Crastre Fran Ois Cooper Frederic Taber Translator - Bonheur Rosa 1822-1899 Masterpieces in Colour

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gifts he may be endowed with by nature, talent cannot be improvised; it is the fruit of independent and sustained toil. Later on, when she in her turn became a teacher, Rosa Bonheur was able to proclaim the necessity of line-work with all the more authority because it had always been the fundamental basis, the very scaffolding of all her works. "It is the true grammar of art," she would affirm, "and the time thus spent cannot fail to be profitable in the future."

During this period of study, she was living in the Rue de la Bienfaisance; her father's mania for changing his residence dragged her successively to the Rue du Roule, and then to the Rue Rumford, in the level stretch of the Monceau quarter, where Raymond Bonheur, who had just remarried, installed his new household.

At that time the Rue Rumford was practically in the open country. On all sides there were farms abundantly stocked with cows, sheep, pigs, and poultry. This was an unforeseen piece of good fortune for young Rosa, and she felt her passionate love for animals reawaken. Equipped with her pencils, she installed herself at a farm at Villiers, near to the park of Neuilly, and there she would spend the entire day, striving to catch and record the different attitudes of her favourite models. For the sake of greater accuracy, she made a study of the anatomy of animals, and even did some work in dissection. Not content with this, she applied herself to sculpture, and made models of the animals in clay or wax before drawing them. This is how she came to acquire her clever talent for sculpture which would have sufficed to establish a reputation if she had not become the admirable painter that we know her to have been.

Her special path was now determined: she would be a painter of animals. She understood them, she knew them, and loved them. But it did not satisfy her to study them out-of-doors; she wanted them in her own home. She persuaded her father to admit a sheep into the apartment; then, little by little, the menagerie was increased by a goat, a dog, a squirrel, some caged birds, and a number of quails that roamed at liberty about her room.

From this time forward, she sent pictures to the Salon annually. During the first years her exhibits passed unnoticed; but little by little her sincerity and the vigour of her talent made an impression upon the critics. The latter were soon forced to admire the intense relief of her method of painting, living animals transcribed in full action, and their different physiognomies rendered with admirable fidelity and art. But what labour it cost to arrive at this degree of perfection! Every morning, the young artist made the rounds of slaughter-houses, markets, the Museum, anywhere and everywhere that she might see and study animals. And this was destined to continue throughout her entire life.

Her success was progressive. Her pictures in the Salon of 1843 sold to advantage and Rosa Bonheur was able to travel. She brought home from her trip five works that found a place in the Salon of 1845. The following year her exhibits produced a sensation. Anatole de la Forge devoted an enthusiastic article to her, and the jury awarded her a third-class medal.

"In 1845," Rosa Bonheur herself relates, "the recipients had to go in person to obtain their medals at the director's office. I went, armed with all the courage of my twenty-three years. The director of fine-arts complimented me and presented the medal in the name of the king. Imagine his stupefaction when I replied: 'I beg of you, Monsieur, to thank the king on my behalf, and be so kind as to add that I shall try to do better another time.'"

Rosa Bonheur kept her word: her whole life was a long and sustained effort to "do better." After the Salon of 1846, where she was represented by five remarkable exhibits, she paid a visit to Auvergne, where she was able to study a breed of cattle very different from any that she had hitherto seen and painted: superb animals of massive build, with compact bodies, short and powerful legs, and wide-spread nostrils. The sheep and horses also had a characteristic physiognomy that was strongly marked and noted with scrupulous care, and enabled her to reappear in the Salon of 1847 with new types that gathered crowds around her canvases, to stare in wonderment at these animals which were so obviously different from those which academic convention was in the habit of showing them.

The general public admired, and so did the critics. It was only the jury that remained hostile towards this independent and personal manner of painting, which ignored the established procedure of the schools and based itself wholly upon inspiration and sincerity; accordingly, they always took pains to place her pictures in obscure corners or at inaccessible heights. The public, however, which always finds its way to what it likes, took pains on its part to discover and enjoy them.

In 1848 Rosa Bonheur had her revenge. The recently proclaimed Republic, wishing to show its generosity towards artists, decreed that all works offered that year to the Salon should without exception be received. As to the awards, they were to be determined by a jury from which the official and administrative element was to be henceforth banished. The judges were L?on Cogniet, Ingres, Delacroix, Horace Vernet, Decamps, Robert-Fleury, Ary Scheffer, Meissonier, Corot, Paul Delaroche, Jules Dupr?, Isabey, Drolling, Flandrin, and Roqueplan.

Her success was complete. Judged by her peers, in the absence of academic prejudice, she obtained a medal of the first class.

This year an event took place in her domestic life. As a result of recent remarriage, her father had a son, Germain Bonheur. The house had become too small for the now enlarged family; besides, the crying of the child, and the constant coming and going necessitated by the care that it required seriously interfered with Rosa's work. Accordingly she left her home in the Rue Rumford and took a studio in the Rue de l'Ouest. She was accompanied by Mlle. Micas, the old-time friend of her childhood, whom she had rediscovered, and who from this time forth attached herself to Rosa with a devotion surpassing that of a sister, and almost like that of a mother. She also was an artist and took a studio adjoining that of her friend; several times she collaborated on Rosa's canvases, when the latter was over-burdened with work. After Rosa had sketched her landscape and blocked in her animals, Mlle. Micas would carry the work forward, and Rosa, coming after her, would add the finishing touch of her vigorous and unfaltering brush. But to Rosa Bonheur Mlle. Micas meant far more as a friend than as a collaborator. With a devoted and touching tenderness she watched over the material welfare of the great artist, who was by nature quite indifferent to the material things of life. It was the good and faithful Nathalie who supervised Rosa's meals and repaired her garments. She was also a good counsellor, and on many different occasions Rosa Bonheur paid tribute to the intelligence and devotion of her friend.

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