tist.

In 1850 she was married and settled in Brussels. From this time for
fifteen years she painted dogs almost without exception. Her picture
called "Friend of Man" was exhibited in 1850. It is her most famous work
and represents an old sand-seller, whose dog, still harnessed to the
little sand-wagon, is dying, while two other dogs are looking on with
well-defined sympathy. It is a most pathetic scene, wonderfully
rendered.

About 1870 she devoted herself to pictures of cats, in which specialty of
art she has been most important. In 1876, however, she sent to the
Philadelphia Exposition a picture of "Setter Dogs." "A Cart Drawn by
Dogs" is in the Museum at Hanover; "Dog and Pigeon," in the Stettin
Museum; "Coming from Market" is in a private collection in San Francisco.

Mme. Ronner has invented a method of posing cats that is ingenious and of
great advantage. To the uninitiated it would seem that one could only
take the portrait of a sleeping cat, so untiring are the little beasts in
their gymnastic performances. But Mme. Ronner, having studied them with
infinite patience, proceeded to arrange a glass box, in which, on a
comfortable cushion, she persuades her cats to assume the positions she
desires. This box is enclosed in a wire cage, and from the top of this
she hangs some cat attraction, upon which the creature bounds and shows
those wonderful antics that the artist has so marvellously reproduced in
her painting. Mme. Ronner has two favorite models, "Jem" and "Monmouth."
The last name is classical, since the cat of Mother Michel has been made
immortal.

Miss Winslow, in "Concerning Cats," says that "Mme. Ronner excels all
other cat painters, living or dead. She not only infuses a wonderful
degree of life into her little figures, but reproduces the shades of
expression, shifting and variable as the sands of the sea, as no other
artist of the brush has done. Asleep or awake, her cats look to the"
felinarian "like cats with whom he or she is familiar. Curiosity,
drowsiness, indifference, alertness, love, hate, anxiety, temper,
innocence, cunning, fear, confidence, mischief, earnestness, dignity,
helplessness--they are all in Mme. Ronner's cats' faces, just as we see
them in our own cats."

It is but a short time ago that Mme. Ronner was still painting in
Brussels, and had not only cats, but a splendid black dog and a cockatoo
to bear her company, while her son is devoted to her. Her house is large
and her grou