The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1899-06-11

How "a Little Girl With Goat on
the Roof of a Paris Garrett he
came the Greatest Painter of AMI
mails in the Whole WOrld-Visit-
ed the StOckyards and AbattOirs
of Paris.
Rosa Bonheur, the famous French ami
NAL painter, who died a week ago, at the
age of Il, at her home in Fontainebleau,
had a strange life. She began as an APP
prentice 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, tomboy.
She always wore mems clothes. She was
buried in them and with her cross of the
Legion of Honor, says the New York
Journal.
But in those freaks which so much dis
tressed her father and teachers she was
really taking the first steps in her great
career as an animal painter.
When she was but years old she used
to sit for hours in her mothers sewing
room cutting out paper figures of cats and
dogs. instead of learning her lessons. That
Bordeaux. Soon after that her mother
died and her father took her and the
three other children TO Paris. Then fol-
lowed the long years of tenement life.
When the poor artist father took them to
I'aris they were miserably 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 dogs
and horses she saw. What treasures she
destroyed when she ruthlessly wiped
those sand pictures out with her feet, so
that nobody could see them!
The mistress at the private school in
the Rue de Revillon, In the Faubourg
St. Antoine, where she was sent at the
age of To- used to severely punish her
truant girl pupil. Rosa would be shut
up in the cellar for days at time with
a diet of bread and water. Her only COM
panion was then a cat. She would sketch
this in every conceivable attitude.
When it was discovered that she was
amusing herself in this way even the cat
was taken away from her, as we'll as
her paper and pencil.
Still Rosa's genius was not baff1ed.
With the burnt ends of matches she
OF the dogs that would peer in at the
grated cellar window from the street.
Such persistence won even the recog-
milton of the school mistress, who care
fully preserved all the sketches which
she had takea away 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 col
Ored, cut out of the paper like paper
dolls, and stuck to the ceiling of the reci-
tation room with chewed bread paste.
When the classes filed in to recite the
pupils would be tickled and the teachers
dismayed at these waving, futtering pic
lures.
The shrewd school mistress would
promptly invent some new punishment
for Rosa at the same time that the new
batch of her colored 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 pupil was, the
could not long be endured. The discipline
OF the school was at stake. The end
came after Rosa had organized a girls
brigade and made 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 top floor of Paris tene-
-1ei.t. Itosa keenly felt her disgrace. 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 figures
she would take out and sell on the boule-
ward
Then she was put out as an apprentice
to dressmaker. Her life was miser-
able. She could sketch, but couldn't
stitch.
Her father about this time saw that
she had genius and began to instruct
and direct her. She gave up dressmak-
ing.
Living up just under the roof, on the
sixth floor, working from morning till
night little Rosa was then the hap
pest she had ever been in her life On
the roof she kept her pets-a pair of
rabbits, an owl, dog, 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 in
plaster.
When she thought the goat needed
an airing in the park she would take it
on her shoulders and carry it down the
five long flights of stairs, and in the
same way bring it back. After her would
fellow the dog and the cat, making as
queer group as was ever seen on a
Partisan street.
She exercised mesmeric, almost hyp-
motto, influence over these animals They
seemed to regard her as a fellow crea-
ture of their species. She harmonized
all their dispositions, and her cat. her
dog, her rabbits and the goat and owl
all lived together in perfect happiness
and peace.
About this time she went to study at
the Louvre, where she made copies of the
great masterpieces. She was so faithful
at this that her copies found a ready
sale, though at small prices This was
the first money that she earned from
painting.
One day she happened to make a study
of a mountain goat She was overioved
at the effect she was able to produce
1t was a life likeness of her own poor
old goat-with the grandeur of it's nat
ural surroundings. This suggested to
her that she could do better than cow
Ing from other artists, or In making
merely hurried sketches in charcoal from
her own pets, as she had been doing.
From this time she devoted herself