e the very essence
of sympathy, love, and life. We feel that she thoroughly knew her
subjects as a connoisseur; but her animals do not impress one as the
production of an artist who knew them as do horse traders and cattle
dealers, who know their stock from the purely physical standpoint; the
animals of this artist are from the brush of one who was familiar with
their habits, who loved them, had lived with and studied them--who
knew and appreciated their higher qualities. Rosa Bonheur most
harmoniously united two essential elements in art--a scientific as
well as sympathetic conception of her subject. Possibly this is the
reason that her pictures appeal to animal lovers throughout the world.

As was stated, she was independent, hence kept aloof from the
corruptions of contemporary French art and its technique lovers,
always pursuing an even tenor in her art and never permitting one of
her pictures to leave her studio in a crude or unfinished state. In
all her long career she kept her original sketches, never parting with
one, in spite of the most tempting offers; and this explains the fact
that the work of her later years exhibits the freshness and other
qualities of that of her youth. Thus, her art has gained by her
experience, even though her best work was done between about 1848 and
1860, and is especially marked by its excellence in composition,
the anatomy, the breadth of touch, the harmony of coloring, and the
action, although it is said to lack the spontaneity, the originality,
and the highly imaginative quality which are at their best in _The
Horse Fair_; the same qualities seem to have been possessed by many of
her contemporaries, such as Troyon.

Notwithstanding these apparent defects, Rosa Bonheur stands for
something higher in art than do most of her contemporaries. She was
not influenced by the skilled and often corrupt technicians; she
perfected her technique by study of the old masters and learned her
art from Nature; wisely keeping free from the ornamental, gorgeous,
and highly imaginative and exaggerated historical Romantic school, in
French art she stands out almost alone with Millet. Whatever may
be said of the more virile and masculine art of other great animal
painters, Rosa Bonheur, by her truthfulness, her science, her close
association and intimate communion with her animal world, by the glad
and healthy vigor which her paintings breathe, has taught the world
the great lesson that there are int