Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/123

 ROSA BONHEUR 277 deaux and do what ne could to make their life easier. As the chances for a pro- fessional artist were small, he adopted the modest employment of drawing-teacher. His skill soon brought him pupils ; among them a young lady from Altona, be- tween whom and her teacher a mutual in- terest sprang up which led to their #nar- riage. Raymond Bonheur brought his wife home to his father's house, where she was welcomed as a daughter, and for the brief term of her life all went well. What the husband earned by his drawing-lessons, the wife supplemented by her lessons in music ; but this happiness was not to last. The parents of Raymond Bonheur died, and then, after not more than twelve years of marriage, the wife died, leaving behind her four children, Rosalie, Francois - Auguste, Jules-Isidore, and Juliette. Rosalie is the best known of these four children of Raymond Bonheur ; but each of them has honorably connected his name with the art of modern France. Francois- Auguste has a reputation as an animal- painter almost equal to that of his sister Rosa. A fine picture painted by him, " Cattle in the Forest of Fontainebleau," was once the property of the late A. T. Stewart. His merit secured him the Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1867. He died in 1880. The other brother, Jules- Isidore, has gained distinction as a sculptor of animals ; most of his work is on a small scale, but he has designed some large pieces that decorate his sister's chateau near Fontainebleau. Juliette Bonheur married a M. Peyrol, and joining her family-name to his, is known in the art-world as Mme. Peyrol Bonheur. It is thus she signs her pictures, mostly still- life and animal subjects, which have gained for her a good position among the minor artists of France. Rosa, the eldest of the family, born in 1822, was ten years old when her mother died. Not long after, Raymond Bonheur decided to leave Bordeaux and to return to Paris, where the chances for professional success were better than in a provincial town, and where there were greater opportunities for the education of his young children. The change proved very distasteful, however, to the little ones. Accustomed to the comparative freedom of the town in which they had been brought up, and where their family had been so long rooted that their circle of friends and relatives gave them playmates and companions in plenty, they found themselves very lonely in Paris, where they were reduced for a good part of the time to such amusement as they could find in the narrow quarters of their rooms on the sixth floor of an apartment-house. It is not the custom in Paris for the children, even of the poor, to make a playground of the street, and ou-