[
599]
The happy and beautiful name which heads this article is befitting the career of one of the most famed and brilliant of women; but, apt as it is, it fails to give us an idea of the remarkable energy and brave persistency of character by which its possessor has fairly acquired her fame.
About ten years ago, a gallery of French paintings of some of the most noted modern artists was opened for exhibition in the
city of New York, in which, notwithstanding two vigorous pictures by Dubufe, senior, and one or two landscapes by Isabey, and some other works of well-known painters, by far the most interesting picture in the collection, which drew all eyes to it, was the portrait of
Rosa Bonheur, by Dubufe, junior, which is now classical.
The face of
Mademoiselle Bonheur, in this portrait, is fill of fire.
The bright, black eyes have great intensity of expression.
The features, by no means beautiful, are yet noble, and convey the impression of concentrated force, as if sharpened by thought.
The hair, cut short, is parted like a man's on one side of the head; and the costume, also, gives the suspicion of something like masculine attire.
The keen and ardent intellectuality of the countenance contrasts strongly with the placid, “sonsie” expression, the stubbed horns, and gentle eyes of the well-fed, amiable yearling, whose portrait
[
600]
is by
Mademoiselle Bonheur's own pencil, and on which she is represented as carelessly and confidently leaning.
At the same time that this gallery was opened, there was also on exhibition in the city
Rosa Bonheur's picture of the “Horse-fair,” --
Marche aux Chevaux. This magnificent painting fairly introduced
Rosa Bonheur to the
American public; although, I believe, it was not the first of her pictures which had been brought to this country.
It is pure life and movement.
It is full of hurrying power.
The horses seem to be detached from the canvas, and one almost feels, at first sight, like getting out of the way quickly, lest some of those big-boned steeds, not apparently under the entire control of their grooms, should trample him down in their fury.
The dust, lit up by the sunshine of a hot summer's day, pervades with its powdery cloud the lower line of the picture.
The horses are a natural breed of useful and powerful animals, in fine condition, and excited by the emulation and rush of numbers.
Their necks are clothed with thunder, and the noise and shouting have brought out all their mettle and fire.
The closest and most patient study is shown in marking the typical individualities of the animal, and in the production of such living power without the slightest particle of exaggeration.
One can see the great masses of muscle quiver, and the very hair of the horses' coats flying about.
Yet, with this absolute truth to nature, there is no servile imitation; but there is than creative touch which makes the horses alive, and bids them, as
Michael Angelo said to the bronze steed of the Emperor Aurelius, “March i”
Undoubtedly this is
Rosa Bonheur's greatest picture, on which her fame chiefly rests; but, in our estimation, one or two others of her paintings — especially of her cattle-scenes -are not only more pleasing, but are equally characteristic of her peculiar genius.
“The Ploughing scene in the Nivernais,” --
Labourage Nivernais,--
now in the Luxembourg
[
601]
gallery, is a charming pastoral landscape in the heart of sunny
France, breathing the tranquil repose of nature, which softens and refines the manifestations of rough animal force.
Yet how admirable the hearty strain and tug of the great oxen under the encouraging voice of their driver, as the ploughshare mounts a little rising slope of the furrowed field!
One powerful white bull in the team, less tractable to the yoke than his fellows, still hangs back with a sullen light in his eye. A long, flowering shrub has been laid over upon its side by the cruel share; while, on the very edge of the ploughed ground, another little flower, untouched, lifts up its pretty, fearless head.
But it is not often that our artist indulges in such delicate feminine touches as this; for her genius is bold and strong, and vies with that of man, despising the appeal to the mere poetic sensibility.
Such rural groups as “The Cantal oxen,” “Hay-making,” “Morning in the Highlands,” “Denizens of the mountains,” and others, are grand pastoral pictures, in which the animals seem to be, as they should, but parts of the wide and open nature.
One of her cattle-scenes tells its story at a glance.
A majestic bull stands in the centre of the group, in the full perfection of his strength, the monarch of the fields.
An older bull and cows lie around on the grass of a high table-land, intermixed with heather, with a wide horizon of craggy mountains in the distance.
A little way off from the central group stands, somewhat foreshortened, and as if cast in iron, a massive young bull, with a lowering and jealous expression of countenance, looking toward his companions, his horns like short daggers, and his tail brandished in air, as if he were already measuring in his rude breast the strength of his antagonist, which ere long is to be tested in deadly combat.
But there is no forcing of such a meaning on the beholder.
[
602]
The idea of the piece may be this, or it may be something else equally in accordance with nature.
The animal painting of the day, developed in
England by
Sir Edwin Landseer and others, while wonderfully true and beautiful, and in the case of the first-named artist highly poetic, contains that, as it appears to us, which is predicated upon a false principle.
While there is doubtless harmony in creation, and something of typical human nature in all the lower orders of being, yet this truth may be so exaggerated as to become absolutely untrue and degrading.
We are touched by the pathos of “The shepherd's chief mourner” and the poetry of “Coming events cast their shadows before,” and we laugh at “Dignity and Impudence,” taking home the latent lesson on humankind so exquisitely conveyed; yet to work upon this idea altogether, to press this sentiment or fancy of moral resemblance between man and the brute creation too far, and to attribute human qualities to animals, surely takes from the truth of nature, lowers art itself, and produces often but a well-painted fable or burlesque.
Rosa Bonheur at least never sins in this way. You may call it a want of the poetic element, but her animals are true to nature, and are not human beings; they are only simple oxen, sheep, horses, and dogs, subordinate parts of the animal world, keeping their own place, exhibiting the well-known traits and instincts of man's irrational servants, claiming to be nothing higher than they are, beautiful as manifesting the nature God gave them, belonging solely to the sphere of rural life, and framed in by the mountains, fields, woods, and streams, by the homely features or the sweet tranquil beauty of pastoral scenery.
She is thus, as one has said, as true a daughter of
Paul Potter, as of
Raymond Bonheur.
Rosalie Bonheur was born in
Bordeaux, France, March 23d, 1822.
1 Her father,
Raymond Bonheur, was an artist
[
603]
of some original power, but was compelled by poverty to renounce his higher studies and his dreams of artistic fame, and to devote himself to giving lessons in drawing.
He was thus all his life kept in the humbler walks of his profession, though he found his reward at last in living to see the fame of his daughter
Rosa.
Day and night this worthy man toiled at his occupation of drawing-master, aided by his young wife Sophie, who gave lessons in music, walking daily from one end of the city to the other.
Through the incessant labors of these devoted parents, the prospects of their little family, already increased to four children, became at length brighter, and
Raymond set about preparing two large pictures for the
Paris exhibition, when he was called upon to suffer the sudden bereavement of his wife's death.
This blow crushed his hopes.
Bordeaux became insupportable to him, and he removed to
Paris when
Rosa, his eldest child, was seven years old.
She was placed with her two little brothers under the care of a worthy matron named Catherine, who lived in the
Champs Elysees; and the children were daily sent to the school of the
Sisters Chaillot.
But sturdy little
Rosa liked sunshine better than school, and played truant on pleasant days.
Her wandering steps were drawn irresistibly toward the neighboring
Bois de Boulogne, which, at that time, bore very little resemblance to the present beautiful park.
Then it was but a rough young forest or copse-wood, untrimmed and uncared for, that had sprung up in the place of the fine old oaks and beeches cut down by the Cossacks in 1815.
Great dusty avenues ran through this wood at right angles, which was very rarely visited excepting by the duellist and suicide.
Sometimes the people of the villages around came to the wood to find a shady place in the heat of dog
[
604]
days; and here and there might be met a stray, solitary rider.
But, in spite of the shadows and solitude, the
Bois de Boulogne had an unconquerable attraction for
Rosa.
To her, a ten-years-old child, there was nothing so magnificent in the whole world as this forest walk.
With her independent manners, brisk gait, her hair cut close, and her round, chubby face, she might have been taken for one of the truant boy-heroes of the
Chaillot school, if the little petticoat coming down to her knee had not shown her sex.
She might often have been seen bounding like a kid along the forest walks, while the good
Catherine supposed she was snug and safe at school.
Making excursions to the rivers and the hills, she plucked big bouquets of daisies and marigolds, or she broke her way into the thick copse, throwing herself on the grass and passing whole hours listening to the songs of the linnets, watching the magical effects of the sunlight struggling through the wood, and gazing dreamily at the great white clouds that floated through the summer sky.
At another time, stopping on the side of the road, she drew with a stick, on the sand, the objects that met her eye, horses and riders, animals and people, framing in her personages with a fanciful landscape, dotted with windmills and cottages.
Her drawing sometimes so absorbed her, that she did not notice the odd group that, after a while, gathered about her, down on their knees, too, in admiration, at the precision of the figures which the little artist had traced on the dusty road-side.
One of them said to her one day:--
“You draw well, my little girl!”
“Yes, indeed,” replied the child, with a decided air. “Papa draws well too. He gave me lessons.”
[
605]
But these erratic ways were after a while found out, and, for better oversight,
Rosa was apprenticed to a seamstress.
The spirited child felt this change bitterly; and it was very soon seen that the monotonous bondage of needle-work was wearing upon her sadly; and her pale face and meagre features caused her father to take her away, and place her in a
pension, or young ladies' school, where, for her board and education, he gave drawing-lessons three times a week.
Rosa soon began to show her bold, self-willed nature, that brooked no control, and turned the school upside down with her pranks.
Nothing could exceed the fun and ingenuity of her extravagant madcap tricks.
Cutting out grotesque caricatures of the older scholars and the teachers, especially of the
English master, she fastened these by threads to balls of chewed paper, and then flinging them to the ceiling, there they dangled and grimaced, to the infinite amusement of the younger scholars.
There was no search for the offender.
Rosa was at once sentenced to a dry crust and water.
But, in the mean while, her extraordinary talent was recognized, and madame, who kept the school, was very careful to gather up these cuttings and caricatures for her album, forming thus an amusing collection.
In her other studies
Rosa made poor progress.
Drawing absorbed her. You might punish her and deprive her of food, and shut her up, but she would sketch landscapes with charcoal on the walls of her closet prison.
At the year's end, to the embarrassment of her father and the envious admiration of the other pupils, she never failed to hear away the first prize for drawing.
Rosa would have been even happy at this school, were it not that her school-mates, by their mean jealousy and spite, deeply wounded her self-esteem.
[
606]
Most of the girls belonged to aristocratic and wealthy families, and the daughter of a poor drawing-master was looked upon by them as a kind of mendicant, admitted by an act of special charity into their company.
Twenty times a day, and especially at meal-times, these young simpletons humiliated and martyrized their fellow-pupil by making comparisons of her plain gown with their silk dresses, or their silver goblet with her pewter tankard.
These needle-points stung
Rosa's proud young spirit.
She grew morbid and sombre.
She avoided the society of her companions.
She had long crying fits, and at times was violently irascible and demonstratively contemptuous of the whole establishment.
M. Bonheur found it necessary to take his daughter home under his own humble roof, and here her troubled spirit found rest.
She threw herself at once wholly into artistic pursuits.
All day long she never quitted her father's study, drawing and painting incessantly.
When it grew too late to draw, she betook herself to modelling in wax or clay; for she early developed a remarkable genius for sculpture, and for some time the struggle was hard as to which branch of art she should follow, but finally the charms of color prevailed over those of form.
When she had decided to pursue painting as a vocation, she spent her mornings at the
Louvre Gallery, studying and copying the pictures of the great masters of the
Italian school, and of
Poussin and
Lesueur, rather slighting the Flemish painters.
The director of the
Louvre Gallery,
M. Mousseline, said of her at this time, “Je n'ai pas vu jusqu'ici d'exemple, d'une telle application, et d'une telle ardeur au travail.”
When she had finished her day's work at the Louvre, she began her studies with her father.
He was her only teacher; and he did not permit her to do anything for public exhibition until he thought her genius was sufficiently matured.
[
607]
Four years were thus passed in the study of the old masters.
But at length she was forced to answer the question, to what particular aim were her efforts to be directed?
Should she become an historical painter?
That would be to forget that she was a woman.
Should she be a
genre painter?
That was something which did not meet the inmost bent and quality of her mind.
Then it was that the remembrance of her early wanderings in the “
Bois de Boulogne” came freshly to her. She recalled the long delights and delicious dreams that she had, as a child, in communion with open nature in the fields and woods, and she awoke to the fact that she was to be a painter of pastoral nature.
Immediately, with the energy of will which she put into everything that she undertook, and which
Goethe says makes the difference between the great and small mind, she began to study, not the painted classical landscapes, with their eternal mountains like mill-stones, and their Arcadian fountains covered with
Greek inscriptions, but the streams, woods, fields, and mountains near at hand, of God's making, and covered with their living flocks and herds.
Every morning
Rosa departed with her painting apparatus, and some simple provision for her noontide meal, crossing the city barriers, and straying, wherever her fancy led her, in the green fields around
Paris.
After having walked a long distance into the country, she rested at the border of some stream, prepared the colors of her palette, and made a rapid sketch of the scene where she happened to be.
She returned home worn out with fatigue, and often with her garments drenched and covered with mud; but this did not prevent her from doing the same thing the next day,
Her attention was even then given to animated nature,
[
608]
drawing the animals that she came across in the fields, and studying their habits; but she longed to have a farm-yard and stable at home, and, in fact, a couple of all the animals that were in the ark. As she could not quite realize this wish, she came as near it as possible.
They lived in the sixth story of a house in the
Rue Rumfort.
Their lodging consisted of four very small rooms, opening out upon a little terrace.
Rosa managed to make this terrace into a hanging garden, with flowers, rope-weeds, and other climbing plants,--a kind of oasis flourishing amid an endless desert of roofs and chimneys.
And here was installed a pretty sheep of
Beauvais, with fine, long silken wool, and which for two years served as a model for our young artist.
But this was not enough.
With a courage above her sex, the young girl went three times a week to visit the
abattoir of the Roule.
There she passed whole days braving the disgusting features of the place, and working and taking sketches amid a crowd of butchers and flayers.
At last she made her debut in the
Salon exhibition of 1841, with two pictures, entitled “Goats and sheep,” and “Two Rabbits.”
The next year she followed with “Animals in a field,” “A cow lying in a meadow,” and “A horse sale.”
In 1844 she exhibited “Horses out to pasture,” and “Horses going to water.”
She kept her pictures in her study until she was satisfied with them, never compromising her reputation with a hasty production; so that in the exhibition of 1844 she had but three little paintings and the clay model of a bull; but, in 1845, she sent in twelve pictures of marked merit with the true stamp of genius.
Mademoiselle Bonheur did not have to struggle through long years of obscurity.
She rose at once into fame.
Her
[
609]
works, though at first a little timid, showed unexampled accuracy, purity, and a vigorous sentiment of nature.
The purchase of her noble picture of “Cantal oxen,” by
England, set the seal to her reputation; and at the same time the
French committee of award decreed her a medal of the first class.
Horace Vernet, president of the commission, proclaimed her triumph before a brilliant assembly, and presented her in the government's name, a superb
Sevres vase.
In 1849
Rosa Bonheur sent to the
Exhibition a number of remarkable paintings, among them the famous “Ploughing scene in the Nivernais,” and a “Morning scene” ordered by the government.
In eight years she had exhibited thirty-one pictures, and many more were painted for private individuals.
Her reputation had now become
European, indeed world-wide; she could not fulfil half her orders from rich amateurs, and wealth began to flow in upon her.
But she was still the same simple
Rosa Bonheur that she is to-day, absorbed in her art, and never showing any extravagance or excess of display in her pictures.
She never attempted the sensational or impossible.
She did not try any novel methods of effect, and was true to nature.
All her pictures are truly felt and thoroughly executed.
There is no need of searching for any other cause of success.
Simplicity has done more for her than artifice for others.
In looking at her pictures people were surprised to find an impression of a serious character in the faces of the great
white and
red oxen, the limpid eye, and the muzzle dripping with foam; the peaceable look of sheep browsing on the savory grass of the hills and mountains, and the landscape breathing the pensive charm and filled with the perfume of the summer fields; it was in fact art which simply reproduced the charm of nature.
“The mission of
Rosa Bonheur,” says
M. Lepelle, of
Bois Gallais, “is to decipher the sublime poetry of rural nature,
[
610]
and to translate to us the works of God.
It is in the fields, the woods, the most rugged and solitary mountains, that she finds the inspiration for her pictures, and her pencil teaches us to read deeper lessons in the book of creation.”
Perhaps the highest quality of
Rosa Bonheur as an artist, and that is saying a great deal, is her truth to nature,--what the
French call “the probity of her pencil.”
Here she wins our inmost sympathy.
Physically,
Rosa Bonheur is of medium, or rather small, stature.
Her features are a little hard and masculine, but regular.
Her forehead is broad and beautiful.
All the lines of her face indicate immense force of character.
Her black or dark-brown eyes are full of brilliancy; her hands are small and finely shaped.
Owing to the peculiar demands of her department of art, leading her to traverse fields, to visit farm-yards and markets, to mingle among shepherds, laboring men, and horse-dealers, she is accustomed, on such excursions, to wear a man's dress, and looks very much in it like a young farmer.
It is impossible to recognize her sex. But she never appears in this garb excepting in the country.
Her dress at all times is simple to carelessness.
Greedy of time alone, she cannot afford to spend it upon herself.
Wearing a great slouched hat, coming over her face and neck, she walks quickly with a firm step, her head down, observing no one, and preoccupied with thought.
She is invariably accompanied in her rambles by two great dogs, of one of which she has made a portrait.
Her masculine dress has sometimes led her into some odd adventures, that are related by her biographers, but which we do not think is worth the while to repeat.
She lives in the Rue d'assas,near the corner of the
Rue Vagiraud, in the only quarter of
Paris where one still finds gardens which have not given way to modern improvements and to an
[
611]
avalanche of stones.
Her little cottage, standing back from the street a short distance, is literally embowered in foliage.
The ground floor contains a dining-room and three sleeping apartments quite modestly furnished.
On the first floor, ascending to it by a carefully carpeted staircase, you come to
Mademoiselle Bonheur's atelier.
This is hung with green velvet, and is filled with exquisite and bizarre objects of art; and, with its tapestry, inlaid floors, pictures, bronzes, pieces of armor, skins of wild animals for rugs, and branching horns of deer and oxen upon the walls, it forms a curious and brilliant
salon. It is open for receptions on Fridays.
While courteously entertaining her guests
Mademoiselle Bonheur still continues working.
“Allow me to resume my brush ; we can talk just as well together,” she says, after the first salutation.
She rises at six, and when the day closes she is still found at her easel, not leaving it until an hour after midnight. During this long period of work she is refreshed by now and then hearing reading and music.
It is said that George Sand is her favorite author, though it is difficult to understand how a character of such perfect simplicity and purity as
Rosa Bonheur's could find the slightest satisfaction of mind or heart from such an author.
Evidently she yields to the irresistible charm of the style, feeling that the poison of the ideas has no danger for her.
She early decided not to marry, wedding herself to her art. During her visit in
England, it was half jocosely and half seriously talked of, that
Sir Edwin Landseer should marry her; but perhaps the fact of her vigorous rivalship in the same line of art daunted the amiable old bachelor.
It is said that when he first saw her “Horse fair,” he magnanimously and humorously exclaimed, “It surpasses me, though it's a little hard to be beaten by a woman.”
Mademoiselle Bonheur has made many journeys.
She has visited the picturesque portions of
France, and roamed
[
612]
over the
Pyrenees into
Spain.
Her delight is in the mountains,--the more solitary and wild the better; and she seldom fails to bring home from these excursions a number of exquisite sketches.
Her companion in these journeys is a
Mademoiselle Micas, who resides with her in
Paris.
This is a middle-aged lady, herself an artist, who, besides being gifted with many mental accomplishments, is said to have a remarkable power of subduing vicious animals by the magnetism of her eye. She thus approaches the most dangerous bulls roaming the mountain pastures, who are induced to stand quietly for their portraits.
Rosa has partially realized the dream of her youth In becoming the possessor, at her home in the Rue d'assas, of quite a number of animals,--two horses, four goats, an ox, a cow, donkeys, sheep, and dogs, without naming many smaller animals, and rare fowls and birds.
She studies the individual traits of animals.
She loves to give their natural history, which she does with piquant originality.
She grows poetical and enthusiastic in setting forth the characters and dispositions of her favorites.
In conversation, she has vivacity joined with depth of judgment and exquisite delicacy of ideas.
She knows how to be very sarcastic, but her generous nature does not allow her to exercise her talent often in this direction.
She is abrupt and independent, but kindly, noble, and self-sacrificing.
In 1849 she lost her father, whom she loved with all the devotion of her strong nature.
Her father had been made the director of the
Communal School of Design for girls, in the
Rue Dupuytren.
Rosa assisted him in his duties, and after his death took his place nominally, although her sister Juliette, now
Madame Peyrol, really carries on the school.
Rosa makes a weekly visit to the institution, and this is
[
613]
the great day of the week for the school,--a day of mingled laughter and tears.
The moment her quick, firm step is heard in the hall of the building, there is a solemn silence.
She passes rapidly round in review, giving to each pupil's work a penetrating glance and word.
Above all she cannot endure bad drawing, and where a scholar repeats her mistakes she is sometimes very severe, telling her that she had better go home to her mother and learn to make bread, or some cutting remark of the kind; which, however, a moment after is followed by some excessively droll and good-natured speech, that dries up the tears of the poor girl, and sets her laughing with the rest.
Upon her great picture of the “Horse-fair,”
Rosa Bonheur spent eighteen months of the most conscientious and exhausting labor.
Dressed in a blouse, she went twice a week to the horse-market, studying the animals, and, in fact, their
Normandy owners and grooms, the portraits of some of whom she has spiritedly painted.
This picture was bought by the
French government, but afterwards fell again into
Mademoiselle Bonheur's hands, and she sold it to
M. Gambart for forty thousand francs.
It was purchased by
William P. Wright of
New Jersey, and is now owned by
A. T. Stewart.
Rosa Bonheur has received immense sums for her pictures, and has, indeed, but to offer her paintings and her portfolio of sketches to the public, to become wealthy; but she is not greedy of money, and is so generous in her gifts to relatives and charitable objects, that she does not. accumulate property.
She has been known to send to the
Mont de Piete the valuable gold medals that she bas received in order to raise funds to assist fellow-artists.
She supports two aged females, who were formerly her servants.
Among many stories of her liberality we mention
[
614]
two.
A poor lady artist, who had been coldly repulsed by several rich men of her own profession, to whom, in her extreme distress, she had reluctantly applied for assistance, went at last to
Rosa Bonheur, who immediately took down a small but valuable painting from her study wall, and insisted upon her accepting it, by which a very considerable sum of money was raised.
A young sculptor, who was an ardent admirer of her genius, addressed her a modest note enclosing a bill for a hundred francs, which, he said, was all he possessed, asking her if she would send him a little drawing of the value of the bill.
The same evening she returned to him his bill accompanied by an exquisite sketch estimated to be worth at least a thousand francs.
We would close this brief account of her life, by quoting from a graphic description, recently written by a Paris newspaper correspondent, of
Rosa Bonheur and her country home:--
Rosa Bonheur's workshop is far away from the breweries of Mont Breda, or the chestnuts of the Luxembourg.
You must take the Lyons line; get out at Fontainebleau, and ask the first individual you meet the road to Chateau By. After an hour's walk, in a thick wood, you perceive at an opening of the Thourmery woods an airy-looking building, in which the architect has combined iron, brick, and wood with rare artistic taste.
From the cellar to the roof everything is graceful and coquettish in this miniature castle.
Its irregularity is its greatest charm, and your eyes could feast all day on the turrets hung with ivy and the balconies entwined with honeysuckle, if your ears did not ring with a peculiar harmony which detracts from your admiration.
You imagine that in the barn near by an Orpheus transformed into an animal is chanting forth a chorus of Richard Wagner's; but, after listening attentively, this strange concert is found to proceed
[615]
from the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cows, the neighing of horses, and the yelping of dogs.
The servant pointed out to me a funny-looking little man, coming towards me knitting his eyebrows.
He had on an enormous straw hat. Looking under it I perceived a soft, beardless face, browned by the sun and lighted up by two moderate-sized chestnut-colored eyes.
The small nose rather exaggerated the size of the large mouth, showing two rows of superb teeth.
Long hair flowed from under her large peasant hat in great negligence.
“Who are you?”
“Where do you come from?”
and “What do you want?”
said she to me sharply.
She stopped in front of me, and thrust her hands in the pockets of a pair of gray-ribbed velvet pants.
I had been struck with the minuteness of those hands, and looked at her feet, which were equally microscopic, in spite of their thick covering of calfskin undressed, with pegged soles.
This Caesar-like apostrophe disconcerted me a little, but recovering my coolness, I answered, “I am a journalist, and T wish to see Miss Bonheur.”
“Well, look at her,” said the little peasant, taking off his head-gear.
She continued in a milder tone, “You must excuse me; you understand that I am obliged to keep intruders away.
If talent makes a wild beast of a person, it is scarcely worth desiring.
You know, also, the loss of time occasioned by the visits of strangers ; the weariness caused by their questions.
Come now with me; I am going to show you my sheep; if it tires you I can't help it; hurry, because I left one half shorn, and if the fleece is not taken off at once the poor beast burns on one side and freezes on the other.
I was born to be a farmer, but fate decided otherwise.
I am a painter, and out of my element.”
[
616]
We should be glad, were we able, to make a detailed criticism of
Mademoiselle Bonheur's works and artistic genius.
We will offer a few words, setting forth as best we can her relative rank as an artist, and, in the phrase of that philobophic French critic,
M. Taine, the “
milieu” to which her character and style of art-production belongs.
Rosa Bonheur is acknowledged to be, beyond all gainsaying, a master.
She is one of the few painters of the day of any country, who deserve that title.
She has attained that proud eminence, which many a man of decided power, but who still walks in stereotyped paths, has not been able to win.--It implies that in her own special field of art she has exhibited an original genius, and has become a leading, if not the leading, representative.
She is, undoubtedly, the greatest
female artist who has ever lived.
Of the two principal departments of art comprehended in the idealistic and naturalistic schools,
Rosa Bonheur belongs decidedly to the latter.
Nature has been her inspirer.
We have seen how, by the sole force of her youthful genius, she broke away from the classical school, like a young horse that throws his rider, leaps the roadside fence, and gallops, with fiery eye and streaming mane, into the wide green fields, rejoicing in his new-found liberty.
She has taken the real facts of nature for the basis of her art. She loves nature.
One must love the little violet before he can paint it. By a patient, self-forgetting study of nature, by winding herself into her inmost confidence, by following those deep principles of beauty and life that are so hidden and evasive, she has grasped the secret of power.
She is not beholden to the
Louvre Gallery, nor to
Poussin.
She does not look at the clear and open face of nature “through a glass darkly” of the older school of pastoral painters, who, while men of genius, have followed some preconceived theory, some solemn artificiality, or some symbolic idea, which
[
617]
came between the truth of nature and the eye and soul of the artist; but in her brave and simple faith she goes away from pictures and crowds out into the pure country, lonely and still, and smelling of the fresh-broken earth and new-mown hay; she traverses rough clayey roads through the fields; she sits in the bare cottages of peasants; she chats with ploughmen in their broad-brimmed hats and blouses; she talks, too, with the patient beasts as they stand panting in the furrows, or with dreamy eye ruminate their cud under the tree-shadows in the sultry noontide; she comprehends the language of their voices, looks, and motions, and spells out, with a child-like docility, the broad page made by the hand of the Great Artist, and pictured over with flocks of sheep,--the earliest type of innocence and purity.
She goes to maternal earth for her nourishment, from whose ample breast is drawn the support of man. A healthful, ruddy child of earth, not of heaven, is her art,--playmate of the herds and flocks, baptized by the morning dew, and sleeping amid the spicy heather of the mountains.
Rosa Bonheur belongs to the
Dutch or Flemish school of pastoral painters, with a far finer and more earnest spirit, and with the more thorough and scientific training of the modern French school.
She is a perfectly accomplished artist in drawing, anatomy, and all the more technical and mechanical portion of her art. She skilfully uses the palette knife on her landscapes for the production of harmonious effects, which, it is said, few artists are able to do. As a colorist, or tonist,
Troyon, her most formidable rival as an animal painter, is said to somewhat excel her, but in no other respect.
Yet, after all, it is not in these things that the great artist is seen, but in the quality of the mind, its vigor and fineness, its capacity to produce.
Here,
Rosa Bonheur, deeply musing, striking out a new path for herself, going to the unfrequented but ever fresh
[
618]
sources of nature, having confidence in her own powers, and producing original and splendid results, shows her true greatness.
She has been called an imitator of nature, and no idealist, or without poetry and imagination ; and she has been, in this regard, unfavorably compared with
Sir Edwin Landseer.
But all art is in one sense imitation.
It is not nature itself, but it is only a representation of natural objects.
It is an illusion, whose perfection is to awaken the same feelings that nature does, to grasp the essential idea which gives life and interest to the object, and forms its real subject in the mind.
Rosa Bonheur does this.
Her pictures are vital with the true spirit of the scene, or of an animal, and where there is poetry in the subject, there is poetry in her picture; but it is of an unobtrusive, unsentimental, every-day; naturalistic sort.
It does not say, “See, here is a poem;” but its truth and beauty steal upon one unconsciously, like the beauty of simple rural scenery and country life.
She does not seek the unknown, but takes the commonest and most familiar objects.
She speaks to the popular heart and the common mind.
While her pictures are full of almost unapproached genius in her peculiar field, yet they are comprehensible by all. Take her picture of the “Muleteers crossing the
Pyrenees.”
They are but three common Spanish peasants, working for their daily bread; but they have come to the top of the mountain pass, among the mists and clouds, and are now beginning to descend.
The way grows easier.
The prospect of getting to their journey's end, of the safe termination of their wearisome march, and of the good wages that await them, fills their minds with careless happiness, which, joined to rude physical strength and spirits, makes them sing and exult.
And the animals, how full of character!
They evidently sympathize with their masters' content; they know very well, too, that their labors have culminated.
What solemn trustworthiness and official respectability
[
619]
in the richly caparisoned and belied mule that eds!what amusing knowingness in the multitude of long ears all pointed forwards!-what awkward obstinate-headedness, expecting cudgel blows, in the young rebel straying from line to pluck thistles!--what a mingling of sagaciousness and
insouciance in the long heads and soft, almost human, eyes!
There is nothing sensational, nothing highly wrought and imaginative, but there is exquisite truth, insight, thoroughness, sincerity, healthful atmosphere, power, and beauty.
Rosa Bonheur's pencil will yet produce, it is hoped, still more perfect works, bringing out undeveloped powers.
She has been strongly urged to come to this country and visit our western regions, and to paint the buffalo and his Indian hunter on their boundless native prairies; but this she will never do; and her forte is not wild nature; for the fine spirit of the woman shows itself, even in the bold vigor of her genius, by her choice of domestic nature, and her preference, in the animal creation, of the noble and gentle friends of man, rather than of his foes and victims of his deadly skill.
The ox rather than the lion is the symbol of her artistic inspiration.
While she loves to seek the wild solitudes of mountain nature, it would seem to be for the sake of their healthful repose, and in order to find her favorite animals in their native haunts and their free modes of life.
In this quiet domain of art the feminine mind, with its truth, purity, and love of beauty, finds a fit field; though not, perhaps, in the province of what is called high art, or ideal art, but rather in the simpler province of naturalistic art. Nature is woman's field,--the study of the fresh, pure works of God, filled with his goodness and love; and yet any field, or any branch of art, for which her genius best disposes her, should be open to her freely, even if she cannot hope to become an Angelica Kauffmann or a
Rosa Bonheur.
Rosa Bonheur has shown what woman can do. She has
[
620]
asserted her right to follow the free bent of her own genius.
She has dared to pursue the path which she felt God marked out for her; and she has thereby said to other women, if you can, do the same.
Through much that seemed to be totally opposed to her sex, and impossible for a woman to achieve, she has steadily made her way, with a pure, bright purpose, and a strong, constant heart, until now the foremost men in the world recognize her equal claim to greatness.
She asks no favor to be yielded her on account of her sex. She claims to be judged by her works on her essential merits, and she stands proudly, but unambitiously, the full, intellectual peer of man.
Genius has no sex. The qualities of the masculine and feminine minds, while profoundly harmonious, even in their contrasts, and together forming the perfect man, are, doubtless, as a general thing, differently “made up” in their relative proportions and dispositions, according to the varied needs of their life-work.
In the masculine mind, perhaps, the constructive and philosophic elements are more prominently controlling, and in the feminine mind the intuitive and sympathetic; yet there is — the same mind in both, the same “fiery particle,” the same imperial and divine faculty, whether It is shown in the ruling ability of a Henry IV.
of
France, or an Elizabeth of
England; in the philanthropic capacity of a
John Howard, or a
Florence Nightingale; in the literary scope and depth of an
Alfred Tennyson, or
a Mrs. Browning; in the creative artistic power of an
Edwin Landseer, or a
Rosa Bonheur.
