Women artists in all ages and countries

by E. F. Ellet

Rosalie Bonheur—as she is called in her acte de naissance—was born in Bordeaux on the 16th of March, 1822. Her father, Oscar Raymond Bonheur, was a painter of merit, who had in youth taken the highest honors at the exhibitions of his native town. He devoted part of his time to giving drawing-lessons in families for the support of his aged parents. An attachment sprung up between him and one of his pupils—Sophie Marqués—a lovely and accomplished girl. Her family opposed their union on account of the artist’s poverty; and after the marriage the young people were thrown entirely on their own resources. Rosalie was the eldest of their four children. Her father was compelled to give up his dreams of fame and the higher labors of his art, and for eight years maintained his family by teaching drawing.

Rosalie—or Rosa, as she has always called herself—was a wild, active, impetuous child, impatient of restraint, and having a detestation of study. She was a long time in acquiring even the elements of reading and writing. When not in the fields, she was in the garden. She remembers a gray parrot, a pet of her grandfather’s, that often called out “Rosa! Rosa!” in a voice like her mother’s, and would bring her in, when her mother would seize the opportunity to make her repeat her catechism. When the lesson was over, the little girl would scold the bird angrily for the trick it had played her. But if Rosa hated her books, she dearly loved all objects in nature, and was happiest when rambling in wood or meadow, gathering posies as large as herself. Her complexion was fair, with rosy cheeks; her light auburn hair curled in natural ringlets; and she was so plump that the Spanish poet Moratia, who then lived in Bordeaux, and spent his evenings at Bonheur’s, used to call her his “round ball.” He would romp with the merry child for hours together, and laugh over the rude figures she was fond of cutting out of paper. Rosa was fond of amusing herself in her father’s studio, drawing rough outlines on the walls, or burying her little fat hands in the clay, and making grotesque attempts at modeling, though these childish efforts were not noticed by her family as showing any genius. The exiled poet, however, saw the boldness, vigor, and originality of her nature, and often prophesied that his favorite would turn out, in some way, “a remarkable woman.”

In 1829 Raymond Bonheur quitted Bordeaux, and established himself with his family in Paris. Interested in the ideas then fermenting in the public mind, he entered into the excitement that preceded the Revolution of July. Periods of national effervescence are not favorable to art; the painter could not sell his pictures, and had to betake himself once more to giving drawing-lessons. His wife gave lessons on the piano; but the growing agitation of the social and political world made their united exertions profitless. Madame Bonheur sustained her husband’s courage throughout this trying period, while she was often compelled, after the day’s labors, to sit up half the night to earn with her needle a precarious support for the morrow. When public tranquillity returned, Bonheur resumed his teaching, and had some of his works noticed in the Paris Exhibition.

Madame Bonheur died in 1833. The father then placed the three elder children with an honest woman—La Mère Cathérine—who lived in the Champs Elysées; Juliette, the youngest, being sent to friends in Bordeaux. La Mère sent her little charges to the Mutual School of Chaillot. Rosa, now in her eleventh year, and detesting books and confinement as heartily as ever, generally contrived to avoid the school-room, and spent most of her time in the grassy and wooded spots afforded in the Bois de Boulogne, and other environs of Paris. Two years passed thus; the children being plainly clad and living on the humblest fare. Rosa meanwhile, with her passion for independence and outdoor life, incurred almost daily the angry reprimands of La Mère Cathérine, who was distressed at her neglect of school for her rambles. “I never spent an hour of fine weather indoors during the whole of the time,” she often said. But this sort of gipsy life could not last. Raymond Bonheur married again, took a house in the Faubourg du Roule, brought the three children home, and endeavored to put them in a way to make a position for themselves. The two boys—Auguste and Isidore—were placed in a respectable school, in which their father gave three lessons a week by way of payment; and Rosa, who could not be got to learn any thing out of a book, and seemed to have neither taste nor talent for any thing but rambling about in the sunshine, was placed with a seamstress, in order that she might learn to make a living by her needle.

Nothing could have been more disagreeable to the poor girl than the monotonous employment to which she was thus condemned. The mere act of sitting still on a chair was torture to her active temperament; she ran the needle into her fingers at every stitch, and bending over her hated task made her head ache, and filled her with inexpressible weariness and disgust. The husband of the seamstress was a turner, and had his lathe in an adjoining room. Rosa’s sole consolation was to slip into this room, and obtain the turner’s permission to help him work the lathe. If he were absent, she would do her utmost to set the lathe in motion by herself, more than once doing some damage to the turner’s tools. But these stolen pleasures were insufficient to compensate her for the repulsiveness of her new avocation; and whenever her father, with his pockets full of bonbons, came to see her and learn how she was getting on, she would throw herself into his arms in a passion of tears, and beseech him to take her away. Every week her distress became more and more evident; she lost her appetite and color, and was apparently falling ill. Her father was much disappointed at the ill success of his attempt to make of his wild daughter an orderly and industrious needle-woman; but he was too fond of her to persevere in an experiment so repugnant to her feelings. He therefore broke off the arrangement with the seamstress, and took her home.

After thinking over many plans for her, he at length succeeded in making an arrangement for her reception in a boarding-school in the Rue de Reuilly, Faubourg St. Antoine, on the same terms as those he had obtained for her brothers. A vast deal of good advice was expended on her, with many earnest exhortations to make the best use of the advantages of the school, by diligent application to her studies.

For a short time after her entrance into this establishment, Rosa was delighted with her new life, for she speedily became a favorite with her young companions, the leader in all their games, and the inventor of innumerable pranks. But the teachers were far from being equally satisfied with the new pupil, who could not be got to learn a lesson, and who threw the household into confusion with her doings. One of her favorite amusements was to draw caricatures of the governesses and professors; which caricatures, after coloring, she cut out very carefully, and contrived to fasten to the ceiling of the school-room, by means of bread patiently chewed to the consistence of putty, and applied to the heads of the figures. The sensation created by this novel exhibition of portraiture, and the ludicrous bowings and courtesyings of the paper figures, as they swayed over the heads of their originals, may be easily imagined. The pupils would go beside themselves with suppressed laughter; the teachers were naturally more displeased than diverted. The mistress of the establishment, struck with the vigor and originality of these drawings, caused them to be detached from the ceiling, and placed them privately in an album, where, it is said, they have been treasured to this day. But Rosa was none the less pronounced a very naughty girl; and she generally found herself condemned to bread and water about five days in the week.

Rosa Bonheur is by no means deficient in the faculty of acquiring knowledge, and has since made up, in her own way, for her early disinclination to study; but it was absolutely impossible for her, at that time, to constrain her mercurial temperament to the measured regularity of a class; and the only branch of study in which she made any progress was drawing, which she practiced assiduously, sharing the lessons given twice a week by her father in return for her schooling.

Rosa, however, was far from happy. Besides the constant trouble in which her love of frolic and mischief involved her, there was another annoyance that poisoned her peace, and gradually rendered her stay in the school intolerably painful.

All the other pupils being daughters of rich tradesmen, they were elegantly dressed, and had their silver forks and cups at table, and plenty of pocket-money for the gratification of their school-girl fancies. Rosa, with her calico frocks and coarse shoes, her iron spoon, tin mug, and empty pockets, felt keenly the inferiority of her position. Her father was as good and as clever as the fathers of her companions; why, then, was he not rich? Why must she wear calico and drink out of tin, while the other girls had silver mugs and beautiful silk dresses? Too generous to be envious, and treated as a favorite by the other pupils, the proud and sensitive child yet recoiled instinctively from a contact which awakened in her mind an unreasoning sense of injustice, and humiliated her, as she felt, for no fault of her own. She had no wish to deprive her little companions of the superior advantages of their lot, but she longed to possess the same, tormenting herself day and night with pondering on her difficulties, and seeking to devise some plan by which they might be overcome. To this period, with its secret mental experiences, is to be traced that firm resolve to achieve a name and a place for herself in the world—to a perception of whose social facts she was now beginning to awaken—which sustained her through the subsequent phases of her artistic development. Yet this resolve, though prompted by a galling sense of the humble character of her wardrobe and “belongings,” pointed less to the acquisition of greater elegance of dress and personal conditions—to which she has subsequently shown herself almost indifferent—than to the attainment of a superior and independent social position. She was determined to be something, though she could not see what, and felt no doubt of the accomplishment of her purpose, though as yet she had no idea of the mode in which it was to be carried out. Meanwhile, her secret discontent preyed on her spirits and affected her health. She became reserved and gloomy, and while seeking, with feverish anxiety, to devise the sort of work that should enable her to gain for herself the superior position she so ardently coveted, she became more and more neglectful of her studies, until, her teachers and her father being alike discouraged by her seeming idleness, the latter withdrew her from the school, and once more took her home.