Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/122

 276 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS was not calculated to interest men and women In general. The nearest that he came to striking the popular note was in his Napoleon subjects, and beside the excellence of the painting, these pictures really make a valuable series of historical documents by reason of their accuracy. But the greater number of the pictures which he left behind him are chiefly interesting from the beautiful way in which they are painted : we accept the subject for the sake of the art. The world re- warded him for all this patient labor, this exquisite workmanship, by an immense fortune that enabled him to live in splendor, and to be generous without stint. From the humble lodgings of his youth in the Rue des Ecouffes, he passed, in time, to the palace in the Place Malsherbes where he spent the latter half of his long life in luxurious surroundings : pictures and statues, rich furniture, tapestries and armor and curiosities of art from every land. But the visitor, after passing through all this splendor, came upon the artist in a studio, ample and well lighted indeed, but furnished only for work, where, to the end of his life, he pursued his industrious calling with all the energy and ardor of youth. He died in 1891, and was buried by the government with all the honors that befitted one of her most illustrious citizens. ^V^ er ROSA BONHEUR* By Clarence Cook (born 1822) girl of something over ten, of sturdy build, with a dark complex- ion, deep blue eyes, and strong features crowned by a head of clus- tering curls, is sitting in the window of a plainly furnished room, high up in an apartment-house in Paris. In a cage at her side is a parrot, which, with its head on one side, is gravely calling out the letters of the alphabet, while the child as gravely repeats them, interrupting the lesson every now and then by a visit to the other side of the room, where a pet lamb greets its young mistress with a friendly bleat. This is our first glimpse of Rosalie, known now to all the world as Rosa Bonheur, the painter of "The Horse Fair" and of many another picture, which have earned for her the distinction of the best animal-painter of her time. Her father's family belonged to Bordeaux. Raymond Bonheur had gone up as a youth to Paris to study art. After the usual apprenticeship to privation which art exacts from her servants, he had become moderately successful, when the condition of his parents, now old and poorly-off, moved him to return to Bor-
 * Copyright. 1894, by Selmar Hess.