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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
S. M. Betts and Company. Hartford, Conn. 1871.
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