celebrated abroad as she was in France. The city of Ghent, to which she had loaned the Horse Fair for its exposition, demonstrated its gratitude by sending her an official delegation headed by the burgomaster himself, to present her with a jewel of much value.

Her talent was no longer open to question; everyone agreed in recognizing it. The critics saw in her far more than a conscientious and gifted artist; they regarded her as the inspired interpreter of rural life. “The work of Rosa Bonheur,” wrote Anatole de la Forge in 1855, “might be entitled the Hymn to Labour. Here she shows us the tillage of the soil; there, the sowing; further on, the reaping of the hay, and then that of the grain; elsewhere the vintage; always and everywhere, the labour of the field. Man, under her inspired touch, appears only as a docile instrument, placed here by the hand of God in order to extract from the bowels of the earth the eternal riches that it contains. Also, in depicting him as associated with the toil of animals, she shows him to us only under a useful and noble aspect; now at the head of his oxen, bringing home the wagons heavily laden with the fruit of the harvest; or again, with his hand gripping the plough, cleaving the soil to render it more productive.” And Mazure, writing at the same period, declared: “Next to the old Dutch painters, and better than the early landscape artists in France, we have in our own day some very clever painters of cattle. They are Messieurs Brascassat, Coignard, Palizzi, and Troyon, and more especially a woman, Mlle. Rosa Bonheur, who carries this order of talent to the point of genius. Several of them must be praised for the art with which they work their animals into the setting of the landscape; but if we consider the painting of the animals themselves, regardless of the landscape, and if what we [Pg 49]
[Pg 50]
[Pg 51]
[Pg 52]are seeking is a monograph on the labour of the fields, nothing can compare with the artist whose name stands last in the above list.”

PLATE VI.—THE DUEL
(Collection of Messrs. Lefêvre, London)

This picture is one of the last that Rosa Bonheur painted. It is celebrated in England because of the reputation of the two horses who are engaged in this passionate duel, on which the artist has expended all the resources of her marvellous talent.

Equally enthusiastic over her paintings was Mr. Gambard, who supplemented his enthusiasm with a very warm personal friendship for the great artist. He had several times invited her to visit England; in 1854 Rosa Bonheur made up her mind to take the journey, accompanied by Mlle. Micas. It proved to be a triumphal journey. After a sojourn at the Rectory at Wexham, with Mr. Gambard as host,—a sojourn marked by official invitations and delicate attentions,—Rosa Bonheur made a long excursion into Scotland, accompanied by friends across the Channel.

This cattle-raising land stirred her to a passionate interest. In the fields through which her route lay cattle came into view from time to time; and hereupon the artist would have the carriage halted, and take notes upon her drawing tablets. Each herd that was encountered meant a new halt and new sketches. The great fair at Falkirk, to which herds were brought from every corner of Scotland, afforded her a unique opportunity for observations and studies. From morning until evening she plied her pencil feverishly, accumulating material for future paintings. At this same fair she purchased a young bull and five superb oxen, to help complete her menagerie. From this journey she brought back a number of pictures of remarkable vigour and beauty. They include a Morning in the Highlands, Denizens of the Highlands, Changing Pasture, After a Storm in the Highlands, etc., etc.

Rosa Bonheur returned to her studio in the Rue d’Assas and immediately prepared her exhibits for the Universal Exposition of 1855. She was represented there by a Hay Harvest in Auvergne, which brought her the grand medal of honour.

From this time forward Rosa Bonheur ceased to exhibit at the Salons. She believed, and not without reason, that her reputation had nothing more to gain by these annual offerings, which interrupted her more productive work. She had given herself freely to the public; henceforth she sought only to satisfy the demands of the patrons of art, who, in daily increasing numbers, besieged her with their orders. She worked chiefly for the English, who had given her so warm a welcome, and who, perhaps, had a better sense than the French have, of the beauty of the life of the soil. The Frenchman, good judge that he is in matters of art, duly admires a beautiful work, regardless of its subject; he is able to appreciate the composition of an agricultural scene, but, being little inclined by nature to the work of the fields, he will rarely feel a desire to adorn the walls of his apartment with a Harvest Scene or Grazing Cattle; he assumes that it is the business of the museums to acquire pictures of this order. The Englishman is quite different. As a landed proprietor deeply attached to his ancestral acres, he appreciates paintings of rural life, less as an artist than professionally, as a gentleman-farmer who knows all the breeds of cattle and sheep and to whom Rosa Bonheur’s paintings were at this epoch veritable documents, quite as much as they were works of art.

In 1860, she gave up her studio in the Rue d’Assas, as well as the one at Chevilly, in order to install herself at By, in the chateau of By which she had purchased for 50,000 francs and in which she had a vast studio constructed. Hither she transferred her imposing menagerie which had grown year by year through new acquisitions. It included sheep, gazelles, stags, does, kids, an eagle, various other birds, horses, goats, watch dogs, hunting dogs, greyhounds, wild boars, lions, a yak (an animal known by the name of the grunting ox of Tartary), monkeys, parrakeets, marmosets, squirrels, ferrets, turtles, green lizards, Iceland ponies, moufflons, lizards, wild American mustangs, bulls, cows, etc.

Rosa Bonheur worked with desperate energy in the midst of her models and delighted in portraying them in a setting of some one of those picturesque and impressive vistas of the forest of Fontainebleau, adjacent to her own residence. She was unremittingly productive; yet France hardly heard her name mentioned save as an echo of her triumphs abroad. England has gone wild over her paintings; and America was not slow in following suit.

But the echo was so loud, especially after the Universal Exposition at London in 1862, that the government three years later made her Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Rosa Bonheur has given her own account of the event:

“In 1865,” she writes, “I was busily engaged one afternoon over my pictures (I had the Stags at Long-Rocher on my easel), when I heard the cracking of a postillion’s whip and the rumble of a carriage. My little maid Félicité entered the studio in great excitement:

“‘Mademoiselle, mademoiselle! Her Majesty the Empress!’

“I had barely time to slip on a linen skirt and exchange my long blue blouse for a velvet jacket.

“‘I have here,’ the empress told me, ‘a little gift which I have brought you on behalf of the Emperor. He has authorized me to take