Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/404

 anxiety, temper, innocence, cunning, fear, confidence, mischief, earnestness, dignity, helplessness—they are all in Mme. Ronner's cats' faces, just as we see them in our own cats."

It is but a short time ago that Mme. Ronner was still painting in Brussels, and had not only cats, but a splendid black dog and a cockatoo to bear her company, while her son is devoted to her. Her house is large and her grounds pleasant, and her fourscore years did not prevent her painting several hours a day, and, like some other ladies of whom we know, she was " eighty years young."

The editor of the Magazine of Art, M. H. Spielman, in an article on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1903, writes: "What the dog is to Mr. Riviere, to Madame Ronner is the cat. With what unerring truth she records delightful kittenly nature, the feline nobility of haughty indifference to human approval or discontent, the subtlety of expression, and drawing of heads and bodies, the exact quality and tone of the fur, the expressive eloquence of the tail! With all her eighty years, Madame Ronner's hand, vision, and sensibility have not diminished; only her sobriety of color seems to have increased." Her pictures of this year were called " The Ladybird " and " Coaxing." To the Exhibition of the Beaux-Arts in Brussels, 1903, Mme. Ronner sent pictures of cats, full of life and mischief.

Roosenboom, Margarite Vogel. Second-class medal, Munich, 1892. Born in 1843 and died in 1896, near The Hague. She spent a large part of her life near Utrecht, devoting herself mainly to the painting of flowers. One