5. Rosa Bonheur, Painter

Rosa was born in poverty. Her father, an artist too, was compelled to give drawing lessons, and her mother had to go from house to house teaching music to assist in supporting their four children. Her mother dying when Rosa was twelve years old, and her father marrying again, the gifted girl was sent away to school where she spent most of her time in drawing funny pictures of her teachers. Later her father taught her to copy the old masters in the Louvre. When she was seventeen she determined her life-work—animal painting; but being too poor to buy models, she would take long walks into the country to study and draw living animals, and later on kept a sheep on her roof-garden for a model. At nineteen she sent two pictures to the Fine Arts Exposition, “Goat and Sheep” and “Two Rabbits,” and others soon followed. When her father died she took his place as Director of the School of Design for Girls, and her sister, Juliette, became a teacher in the same school. She studied eighteen months before painting “The Horse Fair,” which famous picture was purchased in England for eight thousand dollars, and later by A. T. Stewart, of New York, and is now in his collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Landseer, the great English artist, said of her “Horse Fair,” “It surpasses me, although it’s a little hard to be beaten by a woman.” When at her work Rosa Bonheur often dressed in male attire with a large, white collar. She was always busy, cheerful, and generous. Her pictures brought her large sums, which she spent not only in providing for her family and old servants, but in generously assisting poor students. She had one of the most beautiful studios in Paris. When Prussia conquered France the Prussian soldiers were ordered not to disturb Rosa Bonheur or her servants. The poor idolized this wonderful woman, for she always loved them. She died at her home May 25, 1899. But through her wonderful works she still helps us to see the beauty of common things and to feel the poetry in what might seem the drudgery of life.