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Rosa Bonheur
by
Her father had taught her a little and laughed at her foolish little lions and tigers, all duly labeled.
When twelve years of age the good people with whom she lived said she must learn dressmaking. She should be an artist of the needle. But after some months she rebelled and, making her way across the city to where her father was, demanded that he should teach her drawing. Raymond Bonheur hadn’t much will–this controversy proved that–the child mastered, and the father, who really was an accomplished draftsman, began giving daily lessons to the girl. Soon they worked together in the Louvre, copying pictures.
It was a queer thing to teach a girl art–there were no women artists then. People laughed to see a little girl with yellow braid mixing paints and helping her father in the Louvre; others said it wasn’t right.
“Let’s cut off the braid, and I’ll wear boy’s clothes and be a boy,” said funny little Rosalie.
Next day, Raymond Bonheur had a close-cropped boy in loose trousers and blue blouse to help him.
The pictures they copied began to sell. Buyers said the work was strong and true. Prosperity came that way, and Raymond Bonheur got his four children together and rented three rooms in a house at One Hundred Fifty-seven Faubourg Saint Honore.
Rosalie saw that her father had always tried to please the public; she would please no one but herself. He had tried many forms; she would stick to one. She would paint animals and nothing else.
When eighteen years old, she painted a picture of rabbits, for the Salon. The next year she tried again. She made the acquaintance of an honest old farmer at Villiers and went to live in his household. She painted pictures of all the livestock he possessed, from rabbits to a Norman stallion. One of the pictures she then made was that of a favorite Holland cow. A collector came down from Paris and offered three hundred francs for the picture.
“Merciful Jesus!” said the pious farmer; “say nothing, but get the money quick! The live cow herself isn’t worth half that!”
The members of the Bonheur family married, one by one, including the father. Rosa did not marry: she painted. She discarded all teachers, all schools; she did not listen to the suggestions of patrons, and even refused to make pictures to order.
And be it said to her credit, she never has allowed a buyer to dictate the subject. She followed her own ideas in everything; she wore men’s clothes, and does even unto this day.
When she was twenty-five, the Salon awarded her a gold medal. The Ministere des Beaux Arts paid her three thousand francs for her “Labourge Nivernais.”
Raymond Bonheur grew ill in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, but before he passed out he realized that his daughter, then twenty-seven years old, was on a level with the greatest masters, living or dead.
She began “The Horse Fair” when twenty-eight. It was the largest canvas ever attempted by an animal-painter. It was exhibited at the Salon in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three, and all the gabble of jealous competitors was lost in the glorious admiration it excited. It became the rage of Paris. All the honors the Salon could bestow were heaped upon the young woman, and by special decision all her work henceforth was declared exempt from examination by the Jury of Admission. Rosa Bonheur, five feet four, weighing one hundred twenty pounds, was bigger than the Salon.
But success did not cause her to swerve a hair’s breadth from her manner of work or life. She refused all social invitations, and worked away after her own method as industriously as ever. When a picture was completed, she set her price on it and it was sold.
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty she bought this fine old house at By, that she might work in quiet. Society tried to follow her, and in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-four the Emperor Napoleon and Empress Eugenie went to By, and the Empress pinned to the blue blouse of Rosa Bonheur the Cross of the Legion of Honor, the first time, I believe, that the distinction was ever conferred on a woman.
And now at seventy-four she is still in love with life, and while taking a woman’s tender interest in all sweet and gentle things, has yet an imagination that in its strength and boldness is splendidly masculine.
Rosa Bonheur has received all the honors that man can give. She is rich; no words of praise that tongue can utter can add to her fame; and she is loved by all who know her.