The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 11, 1899, Page 27

“THE HORSE FAIR”: OSA BONHEUR, the famous French animal painter, who died g0 at the age of se ven at her home in Fon- the only woman who ever received the cross for intellectual achievements. wore men’s clothes. She was buried was the cr of the Legion d'Hon- a week »d to R that as raging in is. Eugenie in- and on his visits to the hospitals. Napoleon III presented her with sisted on accc In admiration the cross of the A few da of intellectual achievement” was be- stowed upon I The Empre fed it to the artist. Mile. Bon- heur in her studio trou he Empress, who cordially kissec and embraced the art When Eugeni rered pinned on her shoul- der the famous and coy on. Mlle. Bonheur thus became & “chevalfer” of the e , which honor the French republic con- firmed by making her ficer” )n d'Honpeur. Rosa Bonheur, who won lat have cver been beyond the grasp of her sex, was not born with the proverbial golden spoon. . The great arti thus described her early life to an intimate friend, who immediately wrote it down, catching the vivacity and humor which ran through the recital: “My father was a teacher of drawing in Bordeaux, and had his hands full bringing up four children on his slender sala: My mother aseisted as well as she could by giving music lessons. My mother died when I was about seven, and Bordeaux became intolerable to my father. “We came to Paris and father sent us to an honest childless widow—'Mme. Catherine,” as we called her. Mon Dieu! how unen- durable it was for me to sit beside the old lady all day long and sew or knit or. —help in domestic work. “Wher ped Mme. Catherine’s watchful eyes we en- Joyed ou ster Yullette (now Mme. Peysolle) by painting Bheep, my brother August drawing cows, Isadore moulding clay and %CPM ring everything as long as it could creep, crawl, jump or fly. e ble about the Bois de Boulogne, which was a wilder- ness tk ared to what it is now. “One d her came home full of joy and told me he would be able to put in a boarding school in exchange for drawing lessons. It was one of the best boarding schools in Paris, where there were young ladies who were taught the fashionable accomplishments, “My good father wished for a simpler kind of education, more in harmony h his means. But choice was not left to him and he eagenly seized on this fortunate opportunity, consoling himself that I would become an accomplished young lady and that my intercourse with well-bred girls would modify my abrupt manners. “Poor fz How well do I remember myself in my thin print gown and disheveled hair. My total unconcern about dress horrified the other pupils, who called me “little beggar.”. But I crueily avenged myself. I made pen and ink caricatures of them and took care not to flatter. “After a particularly funny caricature they would lock me up in the cellar, where I would joyfully pass the tlme sketching my cat in every concelvable attitude. When they dlscovered how much I pre- ferred the cellar to the schoolroom the cat was taken away, as well s the paper and pencil. “The next time they put me in the cellar I used the burnt ends ot matches to caricature the teachers. These I colored, cut out of paper like paper dolls, and stuck to the celling of the reoitation-room with chewed bread paste. When the pupils filed in for thelr recitations they went off into spasms of laughter at these pictures. Finally the cause of the undue laughter was discovered I was severely pun- ished. “My last escapade was too much for their good humor. I organ- ized a girls’ brigade and made a mock battle charge through the seminary garden, knocking off the blossoms in lleu of actual enemies’ heads. “Bien! then I was sent home in disgrace. Mere Catherine ad- vised my father to apprentice me to a dressmaker, s he unwill- ingly did. After outting up some beautiful materfal jhto horses’ heads the dressmeker refused to have me. I could sketch, but I would not stitch.” About this time Papa Bonheur began to recognise that his daugh- ter had genius which could not be quenched and he began to instruct and direct her. The family lived on the sixth floor, just under the roof, and here Rosa tasted the flrst sweet of happiness, for the Jttle &l was dllowed to give her talents full nlay, 2 : ROSA On the roof she kept her pets—a pair of rabbits, an owl, a dog, a cat and a dearly beloved little goat. needed an airing in the carry i = group BONHEUR’S [10ST FAMOUS PAINTING, NOW IN THE TETROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK. natural surroundings. “It 18 wonderful!” was her father's comment. own pets. nature. attraction for her. to the pastures where the cattle g lunch which she carried with her, and after a day’s laborious painting there was a weary walk home, a simple supper and a few hours’ rest. Finally she thought. of visiting the stockyards and abattoirs. went wild with delight at the opportunity afforded for study, Rosa straightway cropped her hair, donned boys’ attire and be- came a fixture at these places. Storfes without number are told in Paris nf}:nssnciauonn with the drovers and butchers. stocky th anlmall Rosa was yet in her early teens, but dresses and -parties held no She rose at daybreak, walking the weary miles At noon she ate a scanty 8, azed. rd men, sat on boxes and fences all the poor animals in their mute death agonies. Somewhere In ‘her chateau it is said that Rosa Bonheur has hid- OHOXPRPAPEDA DR OHPHOAOHORORDX XS HPXPAPAD AP OX OO N PR OK D 2 OAROAOXOUOXO%D PESHERBDUOROHOH OAOK D FOAPHOH DX GAOA I A O XSO %S When she thought the goat park she would take it on her shoulders and t down the six long flights of stairs and back again in the same After her would follow the dog and cat, making as queer a as was ever seen on the queer Parisian streets. Rosa’s family of animals never quarreled. meric influence over these animals. harmonized, and her cat, She exer: Under her gaze their dispositions her dog, her rabbits and the goat and the owl all lived together in perfect peace and happines About this time she went to study at the L« made copies of the great masterpieces. earned from painting was from the sale of these copies. One day she made a study of her goat with the grandeur of its The first money that she 1 After that no more ving from other artists; no more hurried charcoal sketches of her Rosa devoted herself seriously to painting animals from en sétting her easel in the slaughter-house and painting sed a mes- wa Once when M vre, where she usual male attire she hear: without changing the costume hurried to the sick-room. was seated on the bed affectionately holding the patient's hand the doctor came in, and seeing a young man in such a familiar position hastily closed the door and di den away portfollos with 1800 of her early animal sketches. She got into odd predicaments while thus m The coarse but good-natured men of the stoci the supposed boy’s pictures, would try 1 tha creetly retired. et her drunk. She re- fuced a1l Havos bt Sacs Gtel thet Clparo e e s long as she lived kept up the smoking habit. The men called her “the little Hussar” because of her independent lle. ‘Bonheur was returning from the country in her one of her girl friends was ill, and ‘While she The sick girl saw- that Rosa's male attire had led the physician woman artist. scalded and dr She But the * She jostled with day sketching the much admired. to believe what was far from the truth. luckily caught him on They were hung on the Sensational Life of the Princess Chimau, An American Girl Who Married Abroad. Rigo’s Death by Plague In Cairo Was Reported Last Week, but the Princess Denied It Later. EWS came by wire last week that Rigo, who eloped from Paris with the Princeps Chimay, had been stricken with the bubonic plague at their beautiful villa in Calro and had died almost Immediately. The report stated the dread scourge had attacked him during a mad celebration he was glving over the birth of twin sons by the Princess. His death ‘wae kept from the Princess and she was placed under nuarcotics. The next news of the affair by wire was.that the Princess denied the whole story. The life of the Princess has been a sixteenth centyry play in modern set- tings; a romp in the greenwood; the good old story of “the Gypsy Baron and the fayre ladye of high degree,” and right well has she played it. From the first she worshiped idols of her own ting up, only to kick them over with as little thought as she builded. Utterly de- vold of conventionality she has flouted the world and {ts conventions, and, hav- ing flouted, ridiculed, she has laughingly sacrificed every jewel that is supposed to glisten In woman's crown, and for eight set & pace that has kept awagging three-fourths of the tongues of three con- tinents and part of a fourth. T have been those who were pleased ave sald that the her who devil stood sponsor when Clara Ward was born, and that she had always been more or less proud of her godfather. However that may have been, certalnly Clara Ward could find some excuse for her nature in her parentage. She was the daughter of Captain Eber Ward, the richest man in Michigan, who at the time of his death was possessed of thousands of acres of pine lands and the biggest fleet of ships on the Great Lakes, as well as a reputation that was not envied anywhere west of New York. Insanity developed in nearly all of his progeny and indications of the same Weakness early manifested themselves in his daughter. Of his children there was Lizzie, who died in an asylum; there was Fred, who killed himself; there was Miiton, who be- came an outlaw; there was Charlle, who became an outcast, and Henry, who be- came insane. By a mecond marriage which Eber Ward contracted there were additional children—Will and Clara, the Princess Chimay. The one dlsgraced him- self in Paris. It is of the other this tale s being told. ‘When Clara first felt the taint that was in her she was at school in London, where her mother had taken her from Detrolt to complete her education. BSomething bappened one day and because of it she was asked to leave the place, and was hurried by Mrs. Ward to less conventional Parls. To one of her inordinate vanity and love of notoriety Paris proved a pro- lific fleld for the gratification of both. Bhe had been but a week in her new school when she disappeared, and after elghteen days, In which half the detective farce of the.French capital was seeking her, she was discovered In the garret of a student in the Quartier Latin. She was taken back to her seminary. ‘When her mother reached home after the ten miles drive from the school she was astounded at being greeted upon getting out of her carriage by Clara herself. The girl explained later that being disirclined for further schooling she had climbed .up on top of the carriage and for ten milee provided a spectacle that startled even the Frenchmen. Clara’s achool days ended there and Mrs. ‘Ward, who had become Mrs. Alexander Cameron, took her to Nice. It was there she met the Prince de Chimay, and after & short courtship they were married. Hardly bad the honsymoon waned before tbere burst on the Belgian court—to which her husband had taken her—a scandal similar in proportion, in nature and in mystery to that which but a little before ~ - Continaed on Page Thirty:twa,, Rosa ran after the doctor, the stairs, and left him surprised. that the young man whom he had left tete-a-tete with his patient was a All this time she was so poor that even.the humblest of the men in the stockyards had better fare than she. ed calves’ heads, noticed that the little artist who came so regularly brought only a few pieces of bread, which an- swered for both breakfast and lunch. So he took her to his own house to share his noonday mea Little' Hus: One of the men,” who ar” was soon to- taste the joys of success, She had painted two plctures of her house-top pets. exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1841 under the titles of * bits” and “A Goat and a Sheep.” They were wo Rab- line” and Her success in having her first plctures accepted encouraged her to paint three more for the next exhibition. favorably recefved. For twelve years after that she had pictures at These were even more BOXOROXPHOROADH SUSARPROAVAIAPAPAIHOAOAONOAORORQ PO HPRORPUQUGHIR OO HONPROHOHRAPH DI RORO KD PH O KD HPHOHOHO KO XD each year's salon. They became one of the regularly looked-for fea tures. She sold a number of pictures at modest prices, and the money ‘was used to lessen the pangs of poverty in the Bonheur home. In 1853 appeared the painting which established her fame, “The Horse Fair,” now in the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York. She sold this originally for $8000, which at that time was a fortune in France. Ernest Gambart was the purchaser. Upon receiving the money it seemed such a large amount to Mlle. Bonheur that she vol- untarily offered to paint for him a quarter-size copy of it. She gave this to M. Gambart so that he could have an engraving made of it and recover some of the original cost of his picture. M. Gambart afterward sold the original at a loss to Willlam P. Wright of New York for $4500. He in turn sold it to A. T. Stewart, the great New York dry goods king, for several times that price. When Stewart's art collection was sold in 1887 Cornelius Vanderbilt bought ‘“The Horse Fair” for the Metropolitan Art Museum, and he paid for it $55,000. With the “Horse Fair” money Rosa Bonheur was able to buy the beautiful chateau of By, in Fountalnebleau Forest, near Paris. This chateau was built originally as a hunting lodge by Marle de Medici. Mlle., Bonheur remodeled it, making the upper sto: a large studio. It floors were covered with the skins of huge animals— bulls, bears, lions—some of which their artist owner had hunted and shot and some were the preserved skins of pets. This studio as often as not contained a live tiger, a lion or a ferocious dog that struck. visitors dumb with terror. Rosa Bonheur herself felt absolutely no terror for animals. Thas small hand that handled a brush with such power moved in the mana of a Non without trembling. There was a wild lion, sald to be une tamable, which she kept at By in a cage for a long time. The beast manifested great affection for Rosa Bonheur, wha/ placed herself before him, palette in hand, and made a study of him! in all his fierce magnificence. Now and then he would pass his greag paw between the bars and dumbly ask her for a caress. But her retainers feared “Nero,” and because she did not have; time to train him herself she determined to send him to Paris to be! tamed. ‘Nero” was sad, as though he divined the coming separe=) tion. When the day of departure came and he started on his jour«j ney he turned about with a look of grief—almost of reproach—n the; eyves of that superb face where the Greeks found the lines for thei Jupiter. / “Nero” was taken to the Jardin des Plantes in Parls. He was not 80 well treated there as at Rosa Bonheur’s. A disease of the eyel made him blind. The artist who had used him for her superb study went to see him. She was moved to find him stretched out in his cage, humillated and—dying. He could not see Rosa Bonheur, but he heard her. The clear| voice called ‘“Nero” and the lion stood up, groped about in the d&rk-4 ness which surrounded him until his huge paw- found the hand of] his mistress, which he held until death loosened the grasp. Another beast, a lioness, dled at the foot of the stairway of the{ By house in the arms of the painter, its head, in dying agony, rest- ing on her knees. The charm which protected Rosa Bonheur from beasts of the ]unl;j gle seeemed to lle in her eye. There. was something courageous an mild in her regard which overpowered them. Those kindly gray eyes: had nothing of the fear, nor vet the challenge of hatred so usual to the human eye when looking at feroclous animals. Rosa Bonhe looked upon them as fellow creatures. ! It I8 said that she had but little love for family life and that she; had never been attached to any one half as much as to her horses an\tl cattle. She never married and no romance or love affair ever came ta) the notice of the public. 1 But her forest studio was always frequented by a crowd of artists| and men of affairs among whom she moved in-her careless toilet and! nonchalant manner, chatting, smoking a cigarette and then remrnlng] to her work. She treated peer and pauper with like straight-forwardy simplicity. H Although seventy-séven when she died, she retalned to the end! her alertness and activity. The warm blood of the South ran in her veins and the Parisian spirit rested on her lips. Her face was pe= cullarly attractive, pensive, delicate and yet solid. Her last painting, entitled “Vache et Taureau d’Auvergne,” was’ hung In the Paris Salon this year. Like all her other pictures it was the subject of much wonder. Other animal painters, say the critics, surpass her in color, com« tosmon and even In correctness of drawing, but nowhere in the his- ory of art is found such vigor and such knowledge of the animal, which is more surprising in a woman. All are agreed that “Vache et Taureau d’/uvergne,” vainted while the shadows were gathering, is a fitting conclusion to Rosa Bonheur’s great life work, S