Not long after this, a serious and determined young girl might be seen in the halls of the Louvre, copying with desperate energy the works of the great masters. She wore an eccentric costume, consisting of a sort of dolman with military frogs. It was young Rosa Bonheur serving her apprenticeship to art. The students and copyists who regularly frequented the museum, not knowing her name, had christened her “the little hussard.” But the jests and criticisms flung out by passing strangers in [Pg 23]
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[Pg 25]regard to her work, far from discouraging her, only drove her to still more obstinate and persistent study. The hours which she did not consecrate to the Louvre, she spent in her father’s studio, multiplying her sketches and anatomical studies. Even at this period she had already grasped instinctively the truth formulated by Ingres, that “honesty in art depends upon line-work.” Few painters have so far insisted upon this honesty, this conscientiousness, without which the most gifted artist remains incomplete. Whatever 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.”

This painting is considered by some critics to be Rosa Bonheur’s masterpiece. There is no other painting of hers in which she attained the same degree of power, or the same degree of truth in individual expression. What naturalness, and what vigour in this drove of prancing horses, and what movement of those haunches straining under the effort of the muscles!

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.

At last, in 1841, after years of devoted toil, Rosa ventured to offer to the Salon a little painting representing Two Rabbits and a drawing depicting some Dogs and Sheep. Both the drawing and the painting were accepted. It was an occasion of great rejoicing both for Rosa Bonheur and for her father. The young artist was at this time only nineteen years of age.

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.

In 1842 she sent three paintings to the Salon: namely, an Evening Effect in a Pasture, a Cow lying in a Pasture, and a Horse for Sale; and in addition to these, a terra-cotta, the Shorn Sheep, which received the approval of the critics. And no less praise was bestowed upon her paintings, which showed a talent for landscape fully equal to her mastery of animal portraiture.

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 LÉon Cogniet, Ingres, Delacroix, Horace Vernet, Decamps, Robert-Fleury, Ary Scheffer, Meissonier, Corot, Paul Delaroche, Jules DuprÉ, Isabey, Drolling, Flandrin, and Roqueplan.

Rosa Bonheur exhibited six paintings and two pieces of sculpture. The paintings comprised: Oxen and Bulls (Cantal Breed), Sheep in a Pasture, Salers Oxen Grazing, a Running Dog (VendÉe breed), The Miller Walking, An Ox. The two bronzes represented a Bull and a Sheep.

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 sur[Pg 33]
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[Pg 35]passing 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.

This painting shows the artist in the full possession of her vigorous and unfaltering talent. The Luxembourg is to-day proud of the possession of such a masterpiece. It testifies to Rosa Bonheur’s equal eminence as an animal painter and a painter of landscapes.

The resplendent successes of recent Salons had in no wise diminished Rosa Bonheur’s ardent passion for study. In contrast to many another artist, who think that there is nothing more to learn, as soon as they become known, she persevered without respite in her painful drudgery of research and documentation.

Every day she covered the distance from the Rue de l’Ouest to the slaughter-houses in order to catch some hitherto unknown aspect of animal life, and to note the quivering of the wretched beast that scents the blood and foresees its approaching death.

There was much that was disagreeable for a young woman in this daily promiscuous contact with butchers, heavy, tactless brutes, who frequently insulted her with their vulgar and suggestive jokes. She pretended not to understand, but nothing short of her unconquerable passion for study would have sustained her courage.

Together with the success of recognition came the success of prosperity. Rosa began to sell her paintings profitably. A certain shirt-manufacturer, M. Bourges, who was also an art collector, acquired a goodly number of her works; and after him came M. Tedesco, the celebrated picture dealer, who was a keen admirer of her talent. In 1849, the far reaching renown of her Ploughing in the Nivernais brought her the honour of making a sale to the State, which acquired the celebrated painting for the Museum of the Luxembourg, where it still remains.

The subject of the picture is well known: in a pleasant stretch of rolling country, bounded by a wooded slope, two teams of oxen are dragging their heavy ploughs and turning up a field in which we see the furrows that have already been laid open. The whole interest centres in the team in the foreground. The six oxen which compose it, ponderous and slow, convey a striking impression of tranquil force: and from the different attitudes of the six, we perceive a progression in the degree of effort put forth to drag the plough. The first two move with a heavy nonchalance that bears witness to the slight contribution that they make to the task; the next two, being nearer the plough, are doing more real work; their straining limbs sink deeper into the earth and their lowered heads indicate the greater tension of their muscles. As to the last two, they are sustaining the heaviest part of the toil, as is apparent from the way in which their muscles visibly stand out, and from the contraction of their limbs gathered under them in the effort to drag free the weight of the ploughshare buried in the soil. It is only those who never have witnessed the tilling of the soil who could remain unmoved in the presence of such a work. The oxen are admirable in composition, in action, in modelling, and in strength. And what is to be said of the landscape which is bathed in a clear, bright light, flecked here and there with trails of fleecy cloud?

It seemed that after such a picture, it would be [Pg 39]
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[Pg 41]impossible for Rosa Bonheur to rise to a greater height of perfection. Nevertheless, three years later she exhibited her Horse Fair, a remarkable achievement which raised her while still living to the pinnacle of glory. The Horse Fair is not only the artist’s masterpiece, but it is one of those productions which do the greatest honour to French painting. Celebrated from the day of its first appearance, this canvas has steadily gained in the esteem of the world of art and was destined to bring, even in our own times, the fabulous price attained by certain paintings by Rembrandt, Raphael, and Holbein.

A fantasy by the great artist. During her visit to Scotland her soul had thrilled at the recital of poetic legends; and this is one of these dreams that she has rendered in an inspired page, in which she reveals her mastery of a type of subject which she undertook only accidentally.

In preparation for her Horse Fair, Rosa Bonheur betook herself daily to the spot where the fair was held. But having learned wisdom through the embarrassment of her experiences at the slaughter-house, she assumed masculine garments, in order to attract less attention. She formed the habit of assuming them frequently from that time onward, especially in her studio.

In spite of its triumphal success, the Horse Fair did not immediately find a purchaser and was returned to the artist’s studio. It was acquired later on by Mr. Gambard, the great London picture dealer, for the sum of 40,000 francs.

This celebrated canvas has a lengthy history which deserves to be related.

In coming to terms with Mr. Gambard, Rosa Bonheur, who was never avaricious, feared that she had exacted too large a sum in demanding 40,000 francs. Since the purchaser desired to reproduce the picture in the form of an engraving, and its dimensions were so great as to hamper considerably the work of the engraver, she offered to make Mr. Gambard, without extra charge, a reduced replica of the Horse Fair, one-quarter the original size.

Mr. Gambard, who was making an excellent bargain, accepted with an eagerness that it is easy to imagine. The reduced copy was delivered and was immediately purchased by an English art fancier, Mr. Jacob Bell, for the sum of 25,000 francs. As for the original, it was exhibited in the Pall Mall gallery, but its vast dimensions discouraged purchasers. It was at last acquired by an American, Mr. Wright, at the cost of 30,000 francs, on condition that Mr. Gambard might retain possession for two or three years longer, in order to exhibit it in England and the United States. When the moment for delivery arrived, the American claimed that he was entitled to a share of the profits resulting from the exhibition of the work. As a consequence, the picture which was originally purchased by Mr. Gambard for 40,000 francs, eventually brought him in only 23,000, while the reduced replica, which cost him nothing, brought him in 25,000 francs. Considerably later, the American owner having met with reverses, the Horse Fair was sold at public auction and was knocked down at $53,000 (265,000 francs) to Mr. Vanderbilt, who presented it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As to the reduced copy, the property of Mr. Jacob Bell, the latter bequeathed it, together with his other paintings, to the National Gallery, where it now is. The reproduction which we give in the present volume was made from this smaller copy.

When Rosa Bonheur learned that this reduced replica was to find a place in the National Gallery, she exhibited a scrupulousness that well illustrates her honesty and disinterestedness. Since it was originally painted merely to serve as a model for the engraver, the artist had not given it the finish that she was accustomed to give to her pictures. Accordingly, she set to work for the third time to paint the Horse Fair, and bestowed upon it such conscientious work and mature talent that in the opinion of some judges this second replica is superior to the original. When the canvas was finished, she offered it to the London Gallery. The English authorities were deeply touched by the scrupulousness of the famous artist, and thanked her cordially, but explained that they felt themselves bound by the terms of the Jacob Bell bequest, and consequently could not take advantage of her generous offer. The work, nevertheless, remained in England, having been purchased by a Mr. MacConnel for 2,500 francs.

After her immense success at the Salon of 1854, Rosa Bonheur gave up her studio in the Rue de l’Ouest, and installed herself in the Rue d’Assas, in a studio which she had had built expressly to suit her needs.