Rosa Bonheur Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE VII.--TIGERS

(Rosa Bonheur Studio, at By)

Rosa Bonheur spent entire days in the Jardin des Plantes, or in menageries in order to catch the att.i.tudes and the mobile physiognomies of the beasts of prey. Accordingly no other artist has attained such perfect truth, as is shown in the tigers here portrayed.]

Rosa Bonheur fulfilled her duties with much devotion and intelligence.

She herself had too high a regard for line-work to fail to bring to her task as teacher all of her ardent faith as an artist. She divided the scheme of instruction into two series, one of the _great studies_ of animals and the other of _little studies_. Rosa Bonheur was not always an agreeable teacher; she made a show of authority, not to say severity. She would not excuse laziness or negligence, and when a pupil showed her a drawing that was obviously done in a hurry she would grow indignant:

"Go back to your mother," she would say, "and mend your stockings or do embroidery work."

But this pedagogical rigour was promptly offset by a return of her natural kindliness, a jesting word, a pleasantry, an affectionate term intended to prevent the discouragement of a pupil who often was guilty of nothing worse than thoughtlessness.

Under her firm and able guidance, the school achieved success. Many of her graduate pupils attained an honourable career in painting, and if no name worthy of being remembered is included among the whole number, the reason is that genius cannot be manufactured and that it was not within the power of Rosa Bonheur to give to her young pupils something of herself.

In 1860, the great artist, being overburdened with work and unable to carry on simultaneously the instruction and practice of her art, resigned her position as director. The school pa.s.sed into the hands of Mlle. Maraudon de Monthycle, who won distinction as a director, but did not succeed in making the name of Rosa Bonheur forgotten.

The time of her retirement as professor of the school of design coincides with that of her installation at By. After having in a measure obeyed the paternal tradition of repeated removals, she was this time definitely established. It was destined to be her last residence; and it certainly was an attractive place, that great chateau of By, with its broad windows and its original style, which called to mind certain dwellings in Holland. And what a delightful setting it had in the shape of the forest of Fontainebleau, so varied in aspect, so rich in picturesque corners, so alluring with the beauty of its dense woodlands, and the poetry of its open glades!

Rosa Bonheur was always pa.s.sionately enamoured of nature, of the entire work of creation. She adored animals neither more nor less than she loved beautiful trees and broad horizons; she went into ecstacies before the splendour of the rising sun which day by day brings a renewed thrill of life to all things and creatures; and it was equally one of her joys to watch the diffused light spreading softly through a misty haze over the slumbering earth.

Rosa Bonheur had no sooner withdrawn to the solitude of By than she sought, as we have already seen, to become forgotten, in order to devote herself exclusively to the innumerable tasks which incessant orders from England and America demanded of her. She planned for herself a laborious and tranquil existence, rendered all the pleasanter through the devoted and watchful affection of her old friend, Mlle. Nathalie Micas, who lived with her. We have seen that she came out of her voluntary obscurity in 1867 to the extent of sending a few pictures to the Universal Exposition. From this date onward she ceased to exhibit, and no other canvas bearing her signature was seen in public until the Salon of 1899, which was the year of her death.

Relieved of all outside interruption, Rosa Bonheur worked with indefatigable energy. Yet she could hardly keep pace with the demands of her purchasers, who were constantly increasing in number and constantly more urgent. Her paintings had acquired a vogue abroad and brought their weight in gold. Certain pictures brought speculative prices in America even before they were finished and while they were still on the easel at By. At this period, it may be added, everything which came from the artist's brush possessed an incomparable and masterly finish. Never a suggestion of weakness in design even in her most hastily executed canvases. I must at once add that hasty canvases are extremely rare in the life work of Rosa Bonheur; she had too high a sense of duty to her art and too great a respect for her own name to slight any necessary work on a canvas. Certain pictures appear to have been done rapidly solely because the artist possessed among her portfolios fragmentary studies made from nature and drawn with scrupulous care, and all that she needed to do was to transfer them to her canvas.

From the host of works that the artist put forth at this period, we may cite: 1865, _Changing Pasture_, _A Family of Roebuck_; 1867, _Kids Resting_; 1868, _Shetland Ponies_; 1869, _Sheep in Brittany_; 1870, _The Cartload of Stones_.

The war of 1870 brought consternation to her patriotic soul. She suffered cruelly from the ills which had befallen her country.

Generous by nature and a French woman to her inmost fibre, she did her utmost to relieve the suffering that she saw around her as a result of the Prussian invasion. She spoke words of comfort to the peasants and aided them with donations, distributing bags of grain that were sent to her by her friend Gambard, at this time consul at Odessa.

One day a Prussian officer of high rank presented himself at her home in the name of Prince Karl-Frederick. The latter, who was a confirmed admirer of the artist, whom he had met in former years, sent her an order of safe-conduct which would place her and her belongings beyond the danger of any annoyance. Rosa Bonheur ran her eye over the paper and in the presence of the officer tore it into tiny pieces. n.o.bly and simply the great artist refused to accept any favours, feeling, in view of the existing painful circ.u.mstances, that it would be a shameful thing for her to do. A French woman before all else, she submitted in advance to all the abuses and exigencies of the conquerors. On another occasion, a German prince came to By, to pay his respects. She refused to receive him. We should add that the Prussians, whose excesses and brutalities were so frequent during that campaign, had the wisdom not to meddle with Rosa Bonheur.

After the treaty of peace was signed, she set herself eagerly to work once more. "I was occupied at that time," she wrote, "in studying the big cats; I made sketches at the Jardin des Plantes, in the circuses, in the menageries, anywhere and everywhere that I could find lions and panthers."

This is the epoch from which dates that admirable series of wild beasts in which Rosa Bonheur manifests a power of expression and virility of execution that she never before had occasion to display, and that seem absolutely incredible as coming from the brush of a woman. No other painter has rendered with greater truth and force the undulous and elastic movements of the panther or the tiger; Barye himself, in his admirable bronzes, has never endowed his lions with greater life or more majestic grandeur than Rosa Bonheur has done. The latter, with her astounding memory and with an eye as profound and luminous as a photographic lens, caught and retained the most fugitive expressions on the mobile physiognomy of the great cats. She noted them down with rapid and unfaltering pencil; the painting of the picture after this was a mere matter of execution. Is there any finer presentment of the tranquil beauty of a lion in repose than _The Lion Meditating_? Beneath the royal mane, his features have a haughty placidity and his eyes a serene intentness that are admirably rendered. _The Lion Roaring_ is possibly even more beautiful, because of the difficulty which the artist had to overcome in catching the peculiarly rapid and mobile expression which accompanies the act of roaring. Under the effort of his tense muscles, the mane rises, bristling, around the powerful neck and above the straining head.

There is nothing cruel in the physiognomy of this lion: his roaring is not the cry of the beast of prey scenting his victim, but the call of the desert king, saluting the rising orb of day or the descending night. The artist has admirably expressed this difference in a foreshortening of the head which Correggio or Veronese might have envied her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE VIII.--TRAMPLING THE GRAIN

(Rosa Bonheur Studio, at By)

This work, which was her last, is one of the most beautiful of all that Rosa Bonheur painted because of the intensity of the movement which sweeps the horses in a superb headlong rush, over the heaped-up grain which they trample under foot. This splendid canvas remains unfinished, death having overtaken the n.o.ble artist before the final touches had been added.]

In all the animals that she painted,--and she painted nearly all the animals there are,--Rosa Bonheur succeeded in reproducing their separate characteristic expressions, "the amount of soul which nature has bestowed upon them." M. Roger Miles, the excellent art critic, from whom we have frequently borrowed in the course of this biography, expresses it in the following admirable manner:

"Through the infinite study that she made of animals, Rosa Bonheur reached the conviction that their expression must be the interpretation of a soul, and since she understood the types and the species that her brush reproduced, she was able, through an instinct of extraordinary precision, to endow them, one and all, with precisely the glance and the psychic intensity that belongs to them. She takes the animals in the environment in which they live, in the setting with which their form harmonizes, in short, in the conditions that have played an essential part in their evolution, and she records with inflexible sincerity what nature places beneath her eyes and what her patient study has permitted her to understand. It is more especially for this reason, among many others, that the work of Rosa Bonheur deserves to live, and that the eminent artist stands to-day as one of the most finished animal painters with which the history of our national art is honoured."

In the peaceful and laborious atmosphere of By, the years slipped happily away. But before long a cloud came to darken this serenity.

The health of her tenderly loved friend, Mlle. Micas, began to decline; the doctor ordered a southern climate. Rosa Bonheur did not hesitate; she had a villa built at Nice, and every year, during the winter, the artist accompanied her beloved invalid to the land of sunshine. These annual changes of climate and the care with which Rosa Bonheur surrounded her friend certainly delayed the fatal issue. But the disease had taken too deep a hold. Mlle. Micas pa.s.sed away on the 24th of June, 1889. "This loss broke my heart," wrote the artist. "It was a long time before I could find in my work any relief from my bitter pain. I think of her every day and I bless the memory of that soul which was so closely in touch with my own."

From that day onward, Rosa Bonheur became a prey to melancholy, and her thoughts turned ceaselessly to the tender friend whom she had lost forever. None the less, she continued to work with dogged energy, quite as much to deaden her pain as to satisfy the ever increasing orders.

A great joy, however, came to her in the midst of her sorrow.

President Carnot, imitating the Emperor, came in person to bring her the Cross of Officer of the Legion of Honour. She was keenly appreciative of such a mark of high courtesy, which was at the same time a well deserved recompense for an entire life consecrated to art.

Rosa Bonheur possessed a number of decorations, notably the Cross of San Carlos of Mexico which was given her by the Empress Charlotte, the Cross of Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, the Belgian Cross of Leopold, the Cross of Saint James of Portugal, etc. The n.o.ble artist accepted these distinctions gratefully, but was in no way vain of them, for no woman was ever more simple or more modest than she.

At about this epoch, she devoted herself for a time to pastel work, and in 1897 exhibited four examples of ample dimensions and representing various animals. The whole city of Paris flocked to this exhibition and unanimously proclaimed her talent as a pastel painter.

It was also about this time that she gained a new friend whose devotion, although it did not make her forget her beloved Nathalie Micas, at least in a measure softened the bitterness of her loss. A young American, Miss Anna Klumpke, who was an enthusiastic admirer of Rosa Bonheur, and who herself had some talent for painting, presented herself one day at By and begged the favour of an interview with the artist. The latter received her with her wonted graciousness. The conversation turned upon art. The young girl emboldened, by her hostess's kindness, ventured to ask if she might come to take a few lessons, and at the same time showed a few sketches. Rosa Bonheur examined them and discovered not merely promise, but what was better, an unmistakable talent. She not only acquiesced to Miss Klumpke's desire; she did even better, she offered the hospitality of her own home. Miss Klumpke's visit, which was to have been for only a short time, became permanent; a substantial friendship was formed between the two women; it was Miss Anna Klumpke who closed the eyes of Rosa Bonheur and who was her sole testamentary legatee. She has piously preserved the memory of her benefactress and she has converted the Chateau of By, which she still occupies, into a museum filled with relics of the great artist. She has also published an admirable volume upon the life and work of her eminent friend, that forms a veritable monument of affectionate admiration.

Rosa Bonheur was not slow in reverting again to painting and produced her famous picture: _The Duel_, the celebrity of which was almost as great as that of the _Horse Fair_ and _Ploughing in the Nivernais_.

The duel in question is between two stallions, and what adds to the interest of the scene is that it is historic and perfectly familiar to all the sporting men of England. It was a struggle in which an Arabian thoroughbred, G.o.dolphin-Arabian, overpowered Hobgoblin, another thoroughbred of English breed. The mettle of these horses, fired by the heat of battle, is interpreted in a masterly fashion.

No less perfect is the canvas representing _The Threshing of the Grain_, which it took Rosa Bonheur twenty years to bring to completion. Over a field in which the sheaves of grain have been strewn, eleven horses, drawn life-size, are driven at full gallop, trampling the golden ta.s.sels under their powerful hoofs. The artist has rarely attained the height of perfection to which this picture bears witness.

But at last we come to the close of her career. Rosa Bonheur was seventy-seven years of age, but in the enjoyment of robust health; her talent still retained its unvarying power and her hand was still firm. Her age was not betrayed in any of her works, which had the appearance of having been painted in the flood-tide of youth. Such is the impression of critics before her painting, _A Cow and Bull in Auvergne, Cantal Breed_, which, contrary to her habit, she sent to the Salon. The praise was unanimous; they even talked of awarding her the medal of honour which she refused in a letter of great beauty and dignity. It seemed at that time that the artist would enjoy her robust old age for a long time to come, when a congestion of the lungs prostrated her suddenly and the end came in a few days. She died on the 25th of May, 1899.

The concert of regrets which greeted her death was touching in its unanimity. Without a dissenting note, without reserve, the entire press paid tribute to the dignity of her life, the n.o.bility of her character, the greatness of her talent. According to her desire, she was interred in the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise; and the cortege which followed her coffin was made up of every eminent figure known to the Parisian world of art and letters. Strangers came in throngs, especially from England. And this innumerable cortege that followed her bier testified more eloquently than any panegyric to the goodness of this admirable artist who had been able to lead a long and glorious career without creating a single enemy.