At last the Bonheur family were able to have a home together once more. In a quiet street in Paris, up six flights of stairs, they found a few small rooms.
But what should they do for a garden and for a place to keep their animals? It was Rosa's greatest wish to learn to draw and paint animals from life, and she needed to study living models.
The windows of their rooms opened on a broad, flat roof. Here Rosa and her brother made a roof garden and planted flowers. Here they kept singing birds, a hen and chickens, and a pet sheep.
Every morning the two boys carried the sheep downstairs, and led it to the pasture. In the evening they carried it up the long flights of stairs to the studio. It was drawn standing and lying down, eating and sleeping. It was painted and modeled in clay, again and again, by Rosa and her brothers.
[A GREAT ARTIST]
I.
| sketch | obliged | prize | won |
| death | nineteen | skirts | oxen |
Rosa Bonheur now spent all her time in painting animals. She took long trips into the country to find animals to sketch. There she drew flocks of sheep, oxen at work, and cows standing in the long grass.
Sometimes she went into pens where animals were kept, both in the country and in the city of Paris. Because her long skirts were in the way of her work she often dressed as men do.