Stories Pictures Tell. Book 5

by Flora L. Carpenter

A Day with the Artist.

The story of the artist. Perhaps the reason Rosa Bonheur loved animals so dearly was because she spent the first ten years of her life in a little village, where her parents and their neighbors kept horses, chickens, and pigs, and where Rosa learned to know all about them. Rosa and her two brothers had lambs, rabbits, squirrels, and pigeons for pets. They spent many happy hours out in the fields and woods, yet when their father, who was an artist, decided to move to the great city of Paris the children were delighted. This wonderful Paris they had heard so much about seemed to them the most desirable place in the world to be, and their only sorrow was in parting from their grandparents and from their many pets. Rosa was allowed to take a parrot with her, and the two boys had a dog.

The first place in which they lived was up several flights of stairs and across the street from a butcher’s shop. This shop had a queer sign cut from wood and representing a wild boar, which looked so much like Rosa’s little pig at home that she used to stop to pet it every time she passed.

A man who lived in the same house with the Bonheurs kept a small school for boys. Rosa’s two brothers went to this school, and later the teacher said Rosa might come, too. She was the only girl in the school, but she did not mind that at all, and the boys were glad to have her, for she knew more games than they, and played just like one of them.

The father had hoped to sell more of his pictures in the city, but he did not do as well as he had expected and it cost so much more to live that he had to move his family to a cheaper house and up on the sixth floor.

Rosa’s mother was a musician and gave music lessons to help keep up the home, but she worked too hard and finally became very ill. She died just as the father secured a position in a private school and things began to look more prosperous for the Bonheur family.

For a time the father tried to keep his little family together by leaving them in a sort of day nursery, but this was not satisfactory, so he had to send them away. Juliette, the baby sister born after they moved to Paris, was sent to her grandmother, the two boys to school, and Rosa to an aunt.

This aunt sent Rosa to school. To reach the schoolhouse she had to walk some distance through the woods, and often she would stop on the way, smooth the dust in the road with her hand, and then draw pictures in it with a stick, her favorite pictures being of animals. Often she became so absorbed in her drawing she forgot to go to school, or was so late that her teachers complained to the aunt, saying she was getting behind in her school work. Every time her father came to see her Rosa begged him to take her home, and when at last he could provide for his children they were all very happy to be together again in Paris.

Wherever they lived they must have pets. A great many stories have been told about the pets they kept in their house. Every morning Rosa’s brother Isidore would carry a little lamb on his shoulders down six flights of stairs, that it might nibble the green grass and be out in the fresh air, and in the evening he would carry it back upstairs. It became a great pet, and all the children drew its picture in ever so many different positions. Besides, they had the parrot, a monkey, two dogs, rabbits, and birds. Their father let them keep these in a room especially fitted up for the purpose.

He was teaching in a private school at this time and was away from home all day, but when evening came he gathered his children about him and taught them how to draw. They put their easels in different parts of the room and worked away, drawing and painting, until bedtime. They would all much rather do this than anything else in the world.