The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1899-06-07
ROSA B|)NHEDR' LIE
Lived Among Animals and
Loved by the FierceSt.
T0MBOY IN HER GIRLHOOD
Early Struggle With Poverty
and Final Triumph.

CliO lilUi . tOiAt Cif
New York, June 6.-The Journal says:
Rosa Ronheur, the famous French animal
painter, who died a week ago, at the age
OF seventy-seven, at her home in Fontai-
neoIeau, had a strange life. She began as
an apprentice to a dressmaker and died
the greatest woman artist that ever lived
When a girl, she was a Sprite of the
woods, a runaway from school, a tomboy.
She always wore mems clothes. She was
buried in them and with her cross Of the
Legion of Honor.
But in those freaks which 50 distressed
her father and teachers she WITS really
taking the first steps il her great career
as an animal painter.
When she was but five years Old she
used to sit for hours in her mothers sew
ing room cutting out of paper figures Of
cats and dogs instead of learning her les
sons That was when the Bonheur family
lived at Bordeaux. Soon after that her
mother died and her father took her and
the three other children 10 Paris. Then
followed the long years Of tenement life.
When the poor artist father took them 10
Paris they We're miserabiy poor and the
little girl ran wild, for she had no mother.
But, even when running wild in the old
woods about Paris those days, she was
drawing pictures in the sand Of the dogs
and horses she saw. What treasures she
destroyed when she ruthlessIy wiped these
sand pictures out with her feet, so that
nobody should see them.
The mistress at the private school i5 the
Rue de Revillon, in the Faubourg St. An
tome. where She was sent at the age Of
ten, used to severly punish her truant girl
pupil. Rosa would be shut up in the cellar
for days at a time with a diet Of bread
ard water. Her only companion was then
a cat. She would sketch this in every con-
ceivable attitude.
When it was discovered that she was
amusing herself in this way, even the cat
was taken away from her, as well as her
paper and pencil.
Still Rosa's genius was not baffied. With
the burnt end Of matches she would draw
images on the walls Of heads of the dogs
that would peer in at the grated cellar
window from the street.
Such persistence won even the recogni-
ton of the school mistress, who carefully
preserved all the sketches which she had
taken from the child
When Rosa would again be admitted to
the class rooms, her mischievous genius
took another form. She would draw the
pictures Of her teachers with odd and
humorous distortions. These she colored,
cut out OF paper, like paper dolls and
stuck to the ceiling Of the recitation room
with chewed bread paste. When the
classes filed in % recite, the pupils would
be tickIed and the teachers dismayed at
these waving, futtering pictures.
The shreWd school mistress would
! promptly invent some new punishment for
| Rosa at the same time that the new batch
of her coIored cartoons would be slowed
away in the portfolio, along with the cat
studies made in the cellar. These sketches
are preserved too
| But, amusing as such a pupil was, she
could not long be endured. The decipline
Of the school was at stake. The end came
after Rosa had organized a gir,s' brigade
| and made a mock battle charge through
( the seminary garden, knocking off the
/ rose blossoms in lieu Of actual enemies
/ heads
/ Then the naughty girl was sent back
! to her father-the poor, struggling artist
who lived on the toop floor of Paris tene-
ment. Rosa keenly felt her disgrace. She
went to work in her fathers garnet studio.
! whore he made their scanty living as a
/ drawing master. She was happy only
/ when she had pencil or charcoal in hand,
and was sketching or moulding pieces of
clay in the forms Of birds and animals.
! These little images she would take out
! and sell on the boulevard
Then she was put out as an apprentice
TO a dressmaker. Her life was miserable.
/ She could sketch. but she couldn't stitch.
Her father about this time saw that she
had artistic genius and began to instruct
! and direct her. She gave up dressmaking.
Living Just under the roof. on the sixth
| floor, working from morning till night
little Rosa was then the happiest she had
! ever been in her life. ON the roof she kept
| her pcts-a pair Of rabbits, an owl, q dog.
a cat and a small goat. Best Of all she
loved her little goat But it was her
| sketch of the dog that first showed the
sign Of her genius.
\ They were her companions in play and
her models in art. She painted them on
canvas and moulded their forms il plas-
ter.
When she thought the goat needed airing
I'm the park she would take it on her
shoulders and carry it down the five flights
of stairs, and in the same way 0-;r- it
back. After her would follow the dog and
the cat. making as queer a group Us vas
ever seen ON Partisan street.
She exercised a mesmeric almost h,p-
! motifs influence over these animals They
/ seemed L. regard her us g fellow CreRtL,e