Rosa Bonheur

A LMOST a hundred years ago there lived in Bordeaux, France, an artist whose name was Raymond Bonheur. Every day he sat with his brush and paints making pictures of people, or of the woods and fields about the town where he lived. But while he made many pictures, for some reason he sold very few. This was the only way he had to make a living for his family, so we are sure they were quite poor. Yet they were a very happy family, for they loved each other dearly and always had good times together. The mother was a musician and tried to help take care of her children by giving music lessons.

One day the father told his children that they were going to move to the great city of Paris. They were not quite sure that they liked to leave Bordeaux. They had always had such fun playing in the woods. And how could they leave their pets? The little lamb which would run to them when they called its name, the two rabbits which belonged to the boys; and the old cow and her pretty calf. Father had said there was no place in the city for pets, so they knew these would have to be left in Bordeaux.

The children had no woods or garden in Paris in which to play, only a narrow place between the tall houses or in the street. One day they were playing in the court yard when they heard their mother calling them. Into the house they ran to see what she wanted.

"Where is Rosa?" she asked. "I thought she was with you."

"She said she was tired of playing," said Auguste, the older brother.

"I saw her running down the street while I was playing with baby Juliette," said Jules the other brother.

Where could her little girl be? She was only eight years old, and her mother was afraid she might get hurt or lost in the busy streets. She called again and again and looked for her everywhere.

Not far away was a butcher's shop. In front of it a new sign had just been put up. It was a wild boar's head carved in wood and painted in bright colors. And here is where they found Rosa. She had run away to see the butcher's pretty sign.

How she wished she could make a beautiful picture like that!

The next day she was lost again. This time her mother went at once to the butcher's shop, and sure enough there was her little girl. This time she had brought a pencil and some paper with her and was trying to make a picture of this wonderful sign.

Soon after this the good mother died. Then the family moved again. This time they had to climb six flights of stairs to reach their rooms. The children had never forgotten the garden at Bordeaux nor their animal pets. Rosa planted some flowers and vines in boxes and put them in the windows. These she called their garden. And now they had two pets, an old parrot and a sheep.

Who ever heard of people living in the sixth story of a house keeping a sheep? But that is what the Bonheur children did. Every day when the boys came home from school they would carry their pet down the six long flights of stairs. After he had nibbled some fresh grass, back they would carry him to the room.

One evening as they went up the stairs, they heard their sister's voice and they wondered to whom she was talking. When they came into the room they found the old parrot saying the letters of the alphabet and Rosa repeating each letter after the parrot. She thought it great fun to learn her letters this way.

Would you like to know how this queer little girl looked? We are told that she was a pug-nosed, light-haired, square-faced child, wearing a linsey-woolsey dress, wooden shoes, with her yellow braids hanging down her back tied with a string.

Her father had taught her to draw and her pictures were always of animals. Sometimes instead of drawing she would cut the animals out of paper. These pictures she pasted into her scrapbook. Her father often watched her at work, and he would say sometimes, "I am afraid my little girl will never be an artist."

But Rosa loved the real animals more than the pictures she made, and would often say, "When I am big I shall have a farm. I shall have two of every kind of animal that went into the ark."

When Rosa Bonheur was old enough to go to school, she was placed with some nuns who had a school in Paris. But Rosa was not a model pupil. She liked sunshine and trees and animals better than books, and she liked to draw pictures instead of writing her lessons.

One day when school began she was not in her seat. The teacher asked if any of the girls knew where she was. None of them had seen her. Where do you suppose they found her? Down on her knees in the park drawing pictures in the dust with a stick. She has drawn a whole procession of animals. Now she is putting a man on the back of a horse. Several people are watching her.

"You draw well, my little girl," said an old gentleman standing near.

"Yes, and my father draws well, too. He taught me," answered the little girl. She loved her father and was always ready to praise him.

The nuns grew tired of Rosa because she ran away so much and did not learn her lessons, so they sent her to her father. She was twelve years old now and Mr. Bonheur thought she ought to learn a trade, so she was placed in the shop of a dressmaker that she might learn to sew.

Poor child! this was worse than going to school. She had to stay in doors all  day, the needle pricked her fingers, and the threads tangled. At last she could bear it no longer. She coaxed her father to let her come home, and begged him to teach her drawing. Every day he gave her a lesson and she worked very hard. She was always happy when she had a pencil or a piece of charcoal in her hand.

There is a beautiful building in Paris called the Louvre. In it are some of the finest pictures in the world. Raymond Bonheur often went to this great art gallery to copy pictures. Rosa always went with her father to help him by mixing his paints, cleaning his brushes or doing whatever she could. Sometimes she copied some of the beautiful paintings herself.

There were no women artists in those days, and people laughed at the child, or found fault with the father for allowing his daughter to do such work. This made Rosa feel very badly, so she asked her father to cut off her long braid of hair and let her wear boy's clothes. He did as she wished, and after this the artist's helper was a child with close-cropped hair, wearing loose trousers and a blue blouse.

After she had worked in the Louvre for a year, Rosa decided that copying pictures would not make her a great artist. She knew people would like her work better if she did it all herself. She tried to paint a picture of a man. Then she painted a landscape, but neither of these were good.

She put her head on her hand and thought a long time about what to try next. Looking out of the window she saw her pet goat.

"I'll paint him," she said, and went right to work.

When her father came home she showed her picture to him. How her heart beat as she watched him! And how she did want him to like her work!

"This is by far the best picture you have ever drawn," he said at last. How happy this made her.

From that time on Rosa painted nothing but animals. She was too poor to buy them for models, so every day she took her pencils and paper and went into the country looking for animals to draw.

When she saw what she liked she would sit down and work with all her might. Sometimes she would even forget to eat her lunch.

But Rosa Bonheur found that if she made good pictures of animals she must study them more closely. So she often visited the places where horses and sheep and cattle were sold that she might know more about them. She found that her skirts were very much in the way in such places, so she nearly always wore men's clothing.

The little girl who liked to draw was a woman now. People saw how good her pictures were, and wanted to buy them. She painted all kinds of animals—rabbits, sheep, horses, lions, tigers, her pet dog, and her little donkey.

When she worked in the country she often saw the plowman with his team working in the field. One evening she was reading a book which told about the farmer and his work. She said she could make a picture of this story, so she painted the "Oxen Ploughing."

The most famous of Rosa Bonheur's pictures is the "Horse Fair." It was painted when she was twenty-eight years old.

She spent a year and a half making studies for this picture. She used the fine horses of her friends for models, and then visited all the horse markets of Paris to find horses to suit her. The picture was so large that the artist, (who was not very tall) had to use a step-ladder to reach parts of it.

Every body praised this wonderful picture and were so proud of the young woman artist that they gave her a gold medal.

Some years after this picture was bought by an American and it is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Rosa Bonheur was rich and famous now. She bought a farm and had all the pets she wanted. People everywhere sent her presents of animals. She had horses, sheep, deer, monkeys, dogs, and ponies. She often left her work to go out and play with her pets. One she liked best was Nero, a big lion. She would play with him as if he was a dog.

One time when she was visiting in England, she sent Nero to the Zoological Garden in Paris. He was very unhappy without his mistress. When she came back she found him homesick and blind. She spoke to him and he knew her voice. She took him home, but he died soon after with his head on her arm.

All her life Rosa Bonheur worked very hard. She had many friends whom she loved but she cared most of all for her work. In 1899, her happy and useful life closed. We all like her beautiful pictures, and we learn much of the life of this noble woman from them.