Cecilia Beaux, WWI Commissions

"Leslie Buswell" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "In the spring of 1919, a committee was formed of men and women, prominent in our social and financial world, for the purpose of getting together a series of portraits of the outstanding figures of the War; these portraits to be presented, finally, to the United States Government. A group of artists, five in number, was chosen to do this work. To each artist was assigned three portraits, to be painted, for the most part, abroad, for the chief interest in the undertaking lay in the fact that most of the subjects were to be Europeans of whom only photographs were likely ever to appear in this country, or be owned here, at any rate, by our Government.

The secretary of the committee called on me, and asked me to undertake to go abroad and execute three of these portraits. I accepted with a full sense of the significance and interest of the commission. I was told that the three to be entrusted to me were Cardinal Mercier, [Georges] Clemenceau, and Admiral Lord Beatty.

I realized the responsibility of this undertaking very keenly, and felt that I must approach it with the knowledge that there should be brought to it much more than my mere equipment as an artist. Great portraits of great people are very rare. Art is a jealous mistress when asked to divide the honors with a great personality, and refuses to wait on the scant times and seasons such persons are willing to spare - hurried half-hours here and there.

This is an apology. Whatever is lacking in the result - which of course fell far behind my hopes - I may lay the story of my adventure, a small wreath among the heaped tributes that lie along the pathway of the great..."

Paris - May - and the War over. Best of all we had a friend there - Henry Davis Sleeper - who had left his creative pursuits in the fine arts for participation in the War. He, for a day or two, gave us the precious experience of a trip to the devastated region under his guidance. We saw Rheims, Noyons, Soissons and the rest. Huge piles of rusty barbed wire and empty shells were stacked in order, just beyond the road edge. We moved over the perfect roads in a little French service car. Why, so near to death and ruin, were we so blessed?

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux. 

Cecilia Beaux, A Tribute to John Singer Sargent

"Mrs. Fiske Warren (Gretchen Osgood) and Her Daughter Rachel"
by John Singer Sargent

When John Singer Sargent died in 1925, Cecilia Beaux was chosen, along with several other artists, to give a tribute to him which had been organized by the "Contemporary Club" in Philadelphia. She referred to his swiftness of execution, his technique, his power of expression, and originality. Speaking of the latter she said:

"Rarity, subtlety, originality, often splendor, lay like an aura around what Sargent saw. His eye would have it that way and no other. So that the whole of life was to him an entrancing spectacle from which one chose the most magical passages... All this with grand indifference to all but the essential charm, and treated summarily in good earnest.

Sargent seems to have believed that nothing purely material, even fabrics - in themselves a fine art - have any right to existence in painting except as revelations in flight. Since they must have existence and body, (and he did not wish it otherwise) they must appear in a beauty truly sensuous and moving, be they great folds of satin, films of gauze, or the patine on a piece of old furniture, or brass, or faded gold, and no one has ever known better how to eliminate the importance of THINGS, while at the same time presenting them as a force truly dynamic, in painting."

She concluded her tribute with this poem, a dirge, which she had written.

Sargent: A Dirge
by Cecilia Beaux

Fallen is the tree:
Its great branches crashing;
Empty its wide space upon the sky.
Low upon the ground
Are the leaflets of its crest,
Proud, that knew the upper air.

Fallen is the Chief:
Princes, lay the purple robe upon him -
Purple as the wine,
Ruddy as the fruit,
Yellow as the corn,
He gave to all, generously bestowing.

Death has conquered now,
In the night softly lurking;
Sapped the bold eye's magic,
And the swift hand's daring;
Quenched the beacon flame,
Quenched the Fount majestic,
Darkened sky and thirsty land.

Come, ye pallid starvlings
Nature's unendowed.
Here the banquet waits,
Envy shrinks away,
Take, and satisfy,
Parched soul, and withered eye.

Death is captive here,
Where the heaped-up treasure gleams.
Labor's dower to the ages,
Fruit of travail,
Strong creation's urge.
Here's abundance,
Come, ye People - feast and mourn.

Cecilia Beaux Meets John Singer Sargent

"Portrait of Sarah E. Doyle" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "I had seen a good many of John Singer Sargent's paintings and had keenly felt his power. We had letters to him, and, although I had always shied at the moment of such presentation, feeling it to be a mean advantage, we sent him our 'ticket of admission.' His instant and kindly reply invited us to lunch with him at his club.

His appearance was a surprise, though of course we had often heard him described. The fact that there was no flavor of the studio about him was no impediment for us, for we did not belong ourselves to the group who thought it necessary to carry about with them the labels of their profession. There were fewer cigarettes at that time, but many of the devotees of painting thought grimy velveteen and a slouch the proper uniform for artists, male and female.

We were gay. There was so much to talk about that we all, for the time, forgot our calling; at least we did not discuss it, except that I remember Sargent pointed out especial opportunities that might be ours just then, for seeing pictures, etc., outside the well-known galleries. 

He took us to his studio in Tite Street, where he was at work upon the central painted bas-relief for the 'Christianity,' in the series of 'Religions,' destined for the Boston Library. Sargent was apparently much puzzled as to the treatment of one part of the design of the Cross, with figures of Adam and Eve: he was a very shy man, and his almost stammering appeal to me as to what I thought of the problem, and how to solve it, was that of an eager, anxious self-doubter.

Lunette depicting Christianity by J.S. Sargent

I was filled with confusion, but concealed it, and knew, of course, that I was only a fresh eye, and that it must all be taken as the most natural thing in the world. I said what I thought, and he listened in exactly the same mood. I saw that his 'worldly' appearance, manner, and speech were a sort of armor for his sensitiveness.

There were no portraits about, and very little of any kind of furnishing, but it was a grand large place, and somehow good, and extremely suggestive of the style and simplicity of all his best things. As everyone knows, Sargent was not a collector, and satisfied his beauty sense in the glamour that for him hung about every person and object, and to which most of the world is blind, though, of course, his high culture and lifetime familiarity with the Art of the Old World in all its phases had been 'always with him.' 

I saw him again long afterwards, at lunch at Mrs. Gardner's, at Fenway Court. She had given him the Dutch Room as a studio, and he was engaged on his portrait of Mrs. Fiske Warren and daughter, which he allowed us to see, in its unfinished state. I regret that this was the only time I ever saw any of his portrait painting en passage.

"Mrs. Fiske Warren and Her Daughter Rachel" by J.S. Sargent

The last time I saw Sargent was at luncheon also, at the Chilton Club in Boston. His cousin and intimate friend, Mrs. Richard Hale, was our hostess, and he took us afterwards to see the Lunettes at the Library, which were ready to be placed. He showed us also two landscapes, neither of them, I thought, equal to the picture owned by Mrs. Sears, a rocky alpine pasture, in morning sunshine, aglitter with rain, dew or ice, a revelation of truth so moving that it shook the soul, as beauty does."

To be continued

(Excerpts are from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.)

Cecilia Beaux, Dorothea and Francesca

"Dorothea and Francesca" by Cecilia Beaux

If you've ever been unhappy about your studio - or lack thereof - be encouraged by Cecilia Beaux' account of the creation of this lovely painting, Dorothea and Francesca:

"Tyringham Valley is a realized version of the Twenty-Third Psalm. It is a valley one may enter and behold, lying between its hillsides and modelled by its river..."Four Brooks," the Gilders' Farm, lies upon one of the enclosing hillsides, near the upper end of the vale. The Mountain Hill hangs like a tapestry behind it, and it was upon this hill, among laurel, pine, rock, and sugar maple, that I spent most of the mornings of my summer-long visits at the farm.

They gave me the unused tobacco barn for a studio. It was a huge enclosed shed on the edge of the orchard. Its walls were single upright boards, one inch apart. The ground itself was its floor, and when I took possession there was only one window at the farther end, a square opening with a heavy wooden shutter, through whose frame one could see the near surroundings of the farm, and beyond. When I entered it, the barn was more than half filled with winter and other farm-furnishings, sledges, broken farm tools, ploughs, old wagons, etc., a veritable heaven for the summer hours of children. They (my benefactors this time) put in a long large window on the orchard side, at the farther end, and cleared the space there. I had already had a clear view of the painting I would do there. I saw straight through the ploughs and wagons, and when three glazed windows went into the long opening in the wall, light actually fell upon a canvas (the ghost of one) which would stand in perfect view from a deep ample corner.

The big and little sisters, Dorothea and Francesca, used to execute a dance of the simplest and all too circumscribed design, invented by themselves, and adorned by their unconscious beauty alone.
This was the subject. I built a platform with my own hands, as the girls could not move easily on the bare earth. When it rained hard, in September, the orchard let its surplus water run down the hill and under the barn-sill, so that, as my corner was rather low, I put on rubber boots and splashed in and out of my puddle, four inches deep. October was difficult, for it grew bitterly cold. But valiant posing went on, though the scenic effect of the group was changed by wraps. Summer, indeed, was over, when on a dark autumnal night, in the freezing bard, the picture was packed by the light of one or two candles and a lantern."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.) 

Cecilia Beaux, La Farge and Homer

 

Carnegie Institute Jury, 1899: Top row from left - Schofield,  Anders Zorn, Frank Duveneck
Bottom row - John Wesley Beatty, William Merritt Chase, Cecilia Beaux, Edmund Tarbelle, Julian Alden Weir, Unknown Gentleman

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "I was taken to call on John La Farge in his studio. He had returned from Samoa and the Pacific Isles, bringing watercolors and drawings. I was, of course, fascinated by his distinction, his subtlety, the controlled lightning of his temperament, which was of the gentlest and the most fearsome. He was engaged with his creations in stained glass. He was a man of parts in any field, a thinker, a leader, who chose to be an artist.

I once heard La Farge lecture to students, laying stress from first to last on the hand and its discipline by the mind. He was one of the members of the Carnegie jury for one of its early exhibitions. I also served, and was made happy by the attention and care that he showed me as the solitary female of the committee. The officers of the Institute were untiring in their attentions to all of us. It was proposed that we should drive about and see the town. Four barouches were drawn up at the door of our hotel and into the first of these Mr. La Farge, Mr. Caldwell, the President of the Institute, a mysterious stranger and I were invited to ascend. 

The ambiguous person I took to be a high official. He was a spare, oldish man with a short, dark, almost unnaturally dark, moustache. Everything he wore, and even his cane, was new - and seemed to oppress the wearer a little. He remained absolutely silent during the drive, but there was something intense, observant, in his quiet. I inquired who he might be, and the answer was 'Winslow Homer, of course.'

Until nearly the end of our labors which, with the entertainment so generously provided, filled every moment of the day and a good deal of the night, Winslow Homer maintained his silent attention to duty. He came and went, voted and endured, until nearly the end, when he became restless, and finally confided to one of the men that he grudged every minute now passing.

He had planted nine stands of corn (as models, or course). They would be now exactly ready - that is, just dry and ripe enough for his plan for painting. It was November. They might be ruined by a storm! He also would have liked to depart when and how he pleased. The greatest care was being taken to provide everything in the best manner to save us all trouble in leaving. As we walked, for I, too, was a little impatient: 'I could have bought my own ticket,' said Winslow Homer."

To be continued

(Excerpts from Cecilia Beaux's autobiography "Background with Figures.")

Cecilia Beaux, A Visit with Monet

"Portrait of Mrs. Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes
(Edith Minturn)" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote about a special trip to France: "Before I left, one, to me, highly memorable event had occurred. Mrs. Lilla Cabot Perry was painting at Giverney to be near Monet, and would take me to see him. 

No sun and weather could have been more fortunate for a visit to the specialist in light than we were blessed with. We found him in the very centre of 'a Monet,' indeed: that is, in his garden at high noon, under a blazing sky, among his poppies and delphiniums. He was in every way part of the picture, or the beginning and end of it, in his striped blue overalls, buttoned at wrists and ankles, big hat casting luminous shadow over his eyes, but finding in full volume the strong nose and great grey beard. Geniality, welcome, health, and power radiated from his whole person. 

There was a sleepy river, lost in summer haze not far away. The studio, which was a barn opening on the garden, we were invited to enter, and found the large space filled with stacked canvases, many with only their backs visible.

Monet pulled out his latest series, views at differing hours and weather of the river, announcing the full significance of summer, sun, heat and quiet on the reedy shore. The pictures were flowing in treatment, pointillism was in abeyance, at least for these subject. Mrs. Perry did not fear to question the change of surface. 'Oh,' said the Maitre nonchalantly, 'la Nature n'a pas de pointes.' ['Oh, Nature is not made up of points.'] This at a moment when the seekers of that summer had just learned 'how to do it,' and were covering all their canvases with small lumps of white paint touched with blue, yellow and pink. 

But they had not reckoned on the non-static quality of a discoverer's mind, which, in his desire for more light, would be always moving. For Monet was never satisfied. One could push the sorry pigment far, but not where Monet's dream would have it go, imagining that by sheer force of desire and will, the nature of the material he thought to dominate would be overcome. For the moment, when actual light gleamed upon it, fresh from the tube, it had the desire effulgence, but it could not withstand time and exposure and maintain the integral urge of Monet's idea."

To be continued

(Excerpts are from Cecilia Beuax's autobiography "Background with Figures.")

A movie from 1915 showing Monet chatting and then painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT2Ksapq3Zw

Cecilia Beaux, Finding the Right Tone

"Autoportrait" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "After a separation of nearly nineteen months, the great emotion and happiness of return [to my family] was in finding them all there. The little ones were larger and the older unaltered, to my perception. My uncle helped me to find a studio, and very soon I was undertaking new projects in painting, the next five years being very busy ones.

The painter in question, me, must now deal with actuality, and in no way tentatively. She did know that she had little power over her palette - that is, the color upon it, its substance, and what should be its power of connecting up with what was planned to appear on the canvas. After all - she had not learned to paint.  

Some way must be found to make the obstinate mess on the palette something which, lifted by the brush, might prove to be 'right' when placed where it belonged on the canvas. Chance seemed to offer a sort of approach to a simple solution. This was in trying pastel as means to an end. 

I greatly enlarged my pastel collection, spending much time in choosing shades which were not primary colors, which of course I already had. To work with them, I used a light tray, covering it with a piece of white cloth, to show the tone of the pastels, and also to prevent them from mixing. 

The secret of the procedure lay in the fact that I must know the tone I desired, and then strive to find it. The value of this lay in the fact, also, that the color tried and proved to be right was generally strangely unlike what it appeared to be in my hand. This, as teaching and for developing a faculty, was far more valuable than its use as permanent means of expression.

Also, I remembered a small circumstance during my first days under the criticism of William Sartain. One day, he took my dirty little palette, and without the slightest hesitation picked up on a brush what I would have seen as a bit of mud. Laid upon the half tone, generally one of the most resistant of passages, it proved to be pure, sustaining and perfect in sequence. Recognition of tone on the palette - this, the fragile medium pastel, by the separateness and individuality of its already existent tones (which positively were or were not 'right'), taught choice and strict rejection."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.)

Cecilia Beaux, Thoughts on Teachers

"Couple in Summer" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "The criticism at Julien's was small and there was no theory. What came to me from overhearing did not apply to me, and what I got was chiefly encouragement to keep on as I was going. I am not sure that there is not a good deal to be said for silent treatment in Art. 

What the student above all needs is to have his resources increased by the presence of a master whom he believes in. One who is in unison with a living world, of various views, all of whose roots are deep, tried, and nourished by the truth, or rather the truths that nature will reveal to the seeker. He is the present embodiment of performance in art. He is serious, quiet, a personality that has striven. Nothing breaks the sobriety of his visit. His thoughtful consideration of your drawing will be impartial. He will do you justice and will be gracious toward your earnestness, but it will be a simple matter for him to probe your weakness. 

If his interest is slight, you suffer. If he seems to recognize in you some evidence of power to come, you will feel it in his few concise words as he passes on. Courage and persistence to perceive the truth flame up and stronger, quicker pulses feed subconscious force.

The men who criticized at Julien's were not great, but they had beliefs. Their work was personal and unmistakable, but they laid down no laws of their own invention. Never did the least sign of a desire to teach their personal view impinge upon their delivery of the 'message' to students.

Fortunate is the pupil whose master brings with him far more than he personally contains or is aware of, as something communicated. A student's first conceptions of Art should not be delivered to him in small packages. He should find in his master more than is given to him. Or let him feel only a sense of his relation to Art, to the Subject, his preceptors only liberating him upon the road, warming his desire toward what he is attempting to do, not showing him the overmuch and the myriad possibilities of it, but the simplest solution. He must find out the secrets for himself later, if ever."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.)

Cecilia Beaux, Visiting the Paris Salon

"Dressing Dolls" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "The world of Art in Paris was in no wise opened to me, and in fact was too far out of sight to be even longed for. I saw its reflection only in the Exhibitions. Bastien le Page was being worshipped. Dagnan also, for less reason. The polished sentimentalists had lost ground. L'Hermitte was enormously admired and respected, and, indeed it was something to have recorded the scent of hay, and summer noon and toiling bodies, resting in the stubble, themselves part of the field and drying their sweat in the spices of earth and the hot sun. 

The Salon drew crowds of all kinds. To Vernissage flocked the elite of Paris, the aristocracy of Society, of the Stage, of Music, and Literature, as well as of the Arts: in other words, the French Crowd, always intelligent, always amused, always disputive. How new to me to see a group of forceful, middle-aged or old men, masters in some field without doubt, stooping over a small picture, arguing with heated insistence, denouncing, eulogizing! Never had I seen assembled so many men of 'parts' - real men, I would have said, - so absorbed, so oblivious, greeting each other warmly, and with absolutely no general curiosity; pausing a moment with great deference, before some quiet lady, or obvious beauty, but really there through profound interest in contemporary art. I longed to get closer - not to meet them, but to hear their talk, their dispute about the supreme subject. 

Into the gallery one day, as our obscure party moved about, there entered a Personage; a charming figure, with a following of worshippers. The lady was dressed in black lace, strangely fashioned. Though she was small, her step and carriage, slow and gracious as she moved and spoke, were queenly. She was a dazzling blonde, somewhat restored and not beautiful, as one saw her nearer. The striking point in her costume - and there was but one - was that the upper part of her corsage, or yoke, was made entirely of fresh violets, bringing their perfume with them. Every one, artists and their friends, ceased their examination of the pictures, and openly gazed, murmuring their pride and joy in their idol, Sarah Bernhardt. 

Numerous, of course, in the crowd were the artists themselves. Many of them were men of sixty or seventy, with fine intellectual heads, sometimes with a quiet little woman beside them. Puvis might have been there in his black silk cap, venerated, full of honors, or Jean Paul Laurens, Raffaelli or Renoir even. Every one was there, from the little old man, loved and respected for his lifelong devotion to the cher metier, to the young aspirant, long-haired and loose-cravated, and of course accompanied by his petite amie; and the flamboyant bel homme, trying to be satisfied with what he could get of notice. Generally I remained ready to progress noiselessly, and without importance." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.) 

Cecilia Beaux, Pursuing La Verité

 

"Mr. and Mrs.Anson Phelps Stokes" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "M. Julien had a few words with me, very serious, and with some emotion, to which my beating heart, of course, responded. 'Mademoiselle,' he urged, 'you must devote yourself to the expression of feeling. Do not waste your time upon trivial subjects' - or words to that effect. I always felt that he looked upon me with a kind of anxiety, as if he feared that I would go astray, wander, exaggerate, not adhere to the noble 'truth only' which was the ideal held before us by 'les maitres'; and one day, a year after, when I was working in a little studio I had taken in the rue Notre Dame des Champs, he suddenly appeared there to my great astonishment.

'Mademoiselle,' he said, with intense and solemn earnestness (and then followed the estimate of my 'talent' as shown in the Cours, and which may be omitted here). 'Mais, Mademoiselle, mais, je crains pour vous, je crains pour vous! [But, Miss, but, I fear for you, I fear for you!] I think I must have sworn adherence to 'La Verité' [the Truth] and to that only, and it was an adherence that I was already, if not vowed to, making daily practice of, with all that within me was.

I am glad that my long hours in the Life-Class were untroubled by doubt. I was working my way into the mystery of Nature, like a chipmunk storing up what could be used later, every step revealing secrets of vision I burned to express; to cease from blundering and begin to conquer, to state what I saw as being a salvage of the best; discovery of integral  truth, discovery of means to report it that would mate with my emotion.

I made one or two attempts at painting and found that without space and power to move, I got nowhere. I could neither see nor feel, and I felt smothered among the canvases about me. I decided to give up painting in the class, and devoted all my time to drawing, the difference of scale taking the place of space. I tried only to learn the figure, amazing enough in the pose, but when the rest came, and I could see what movement revealed, I attempted only to get it by heart, to store up passages, articulations, weight. I must wait for painting.

What peace, what space for deliberation, there was in being a student! I did not have to think of exhibition or any of the sordid growths that flourish about student life when permitted, and in fact are planted by their directors in many schools now. It was all between the fascinating object and myself."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.)

Cecilia Beaux, Success at Julien's

"Sita and Sarita" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "Every week subjects for composition were given out. The compositions were handed in on a Saturday, and the student who had produced the best in the opinion of le Maitre had the privilege of first choice of place on Monday morning for the new pose. This, in such a crowded room, was an immense advantage, but punctuality was also the price, for without it one's chance was given to the next. I had the good luck to win it pretty often. 

The subjects were frequently Biblical, and when the 'Supper at Emmaus' was given out, I had already visited the Salon Carré [at the Louvre]. Of course, what I produced was inevitably an imitation of Rembrandt, though not in design. I had no models and had to bring forth the same by means of inward vision, which I was beginning to practice. 

The compositions were shown on the wall, and we all stood behind Fleury, or whoever the critic of the month might have been, to see them. He stood growling before them with folded arms. Pointing to mine, he said savagely, 'Qui est-ce qui a fait ca (Who did this)?" I stood quaking before him, for he was often bitterly ironical. 'Humph,' he said, 'c'est vous? Je n'ai pas vu les autres, mais je sais bien que c'est la meilleure (It is you? I haven't seen the others, but I know very well that it is the best).' 

The next day Julian came to the class. He held up my composition, which was in size about eight by ten inches, and looked at me smiling. It was to be 'accrochée sur le mur.' This was the highest honor the work of a student could hope for, and the wall showed a meagre collection of examples, charcoal studies from the model, and a few paintings, and once there, it was forever. They were never to yield their place. Once worthy, always worthy - a record of the Cours. What simple faith in an everlasting standard! Glorious reward, where are you now? But it can truly be confessed that no subsequent award or distinction that Fate thought good to bestow on me had power to seem such a gift as this."

To be continued

(Excerpts from Cecilia Beaux's autobiography "Background with Figures.")

Cecilia Beaux, M. Julien and His Académie

"Portrait of a Young Woman" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "M. Julien, the organizer and director of the cours, had been a prize-fighter by profession, and whatever the turn of fate or necessity that directed his ambitions toward the realm of the Fine Arts, he was certainly an example of the versatility of the French mind. He had never attempted to become an artist, but he had frequented the milieus and haunts of artists. 

The lobbies of the Salons and the Exhibitions were familiar to him. He had haunted the sittings of juries, in one capacity or another, listened in cafes and on the boulevards to the heated discussions of the newcomer and the Grands Maitres on the pavés through spring nights. All was familiar to him and he to all. Most of all he had lived in Paris and had for years not stirred outside of her most characteristic circle. As he was French, neither his origin nor his eye for business stood in the way of culture in the Fine Arts, far in advance of his opportunities.

He was a big, handsome man, who never for a moment forgot his position of manager only, and held the masters who came to criticize the class in high reverence. Nevertheless, he had an eye on every pupil, and would appear unexpectedly in the class, a serious and observant figure, decidedly on the watch. 

Rudolphe Julian

Women's Class at l'Académie Julian

We had no luxuries. The room was kept warm by a stove, on the models' account. But for that, I fancy we should often have drawn with numb fingers. The patience and fidelity of the models to their job was pitiful. There were so many others to take their place, if they failed. One poor thing, who had the face of a worn-out provider, and with her aging countenance and shabby clothes, would never have been noticed by anyone, had a slender and perfect form with exquisite articulations. She used to fetch a large basket of mending from behind the screen during the rests, and drawing a forlorn skirt about her shoulders, fall to with French zeal upon small ragged stockings and patched underwear. I heard that she was a favorite model for the 'Printemps,' 'Sources,' and 'Jeunesse' that we were to admire in the Salon before long"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures," the autobiography of Cecilia Beaux.)

Cecilia Beaux, First Critique at l'Academie Julien

"Ernesta Drinker," 1905 by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "I had worked alone, and fully believed that, in Paris, I should be among brilliant and advanced students, far ahead of a practically untaught American. I was to learn that the Academie Julian was a business enterprise, and could not be maintained for gifted students only. 

I began, of course, with an 'Academy,' a full-length drawing. 'Tony' - that is Tony Robert Fleury - was to criticize that week, and at the hour entered a young-middle-aged and very handsome man, with a face in which there were deep marks of disappointment; his eyes, grey and deeply set, smouldered with burnt-out fires. How un-American they were! As I observed him from behind my easel, I felt that I had touched for the first time the confines of that which made France and Paris a place of pilgrimage. Into the room with him came something of what he had come from and lived in. 

The class, although accustomed to him, was in a flutter. I was still and icy with terror, fearing among other qualms that I might not understand him and blunder hideously. My turn approached. He sat down. I knew only enough French to stammer out, as my defense, that it was my first attempt in Life-Class. He muttered something in a deep voice that sounded like an oath, and plunged me deeper in woe. 

The class, which understood better, looked around. I began to hear that he was quoting Corneille. He asked me where I had studied, and my story did not seem to account for my drawing. He rose, not having given me any advice, but bent his cavernous eyes on me with a penetrating but very reserved smile and turned to the next. The class had gathered round by this time...and when le Maitre had left, they rushed to me, and, if it had been the practice of the day, would have borne me on their shoulders."

To be continued

(Excerpts from Cecilia Beaux's autobiography "Background with Figures.") 

Cecilia Beaux, The Voyage to Europe

"Ethel Page as Undine" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "My uncle decided to aid me in every way possible to go and study in Europe. He settled up my studio affairs, the steamer passage, passport, letter of credit, etc., and most important, a companion for the trip. A cousin came from Montana to sail with me on the Red Star steamer, the Nordland, to Antwerp. It would be a winter voyage and not less than twelve days long. 

An artist friend, Henry Thouron, well acquainted with Munich, Paris and the Galleries, made monochrome drawings on oil sketchboards to be used in making color studies in the Louvre and elsewhere. I had an 8 x 10 of Titian's 'Entombment,' the same of the 'Madonna with the Rabbit,' also an Infanta Marguerite and a head of Rubens, besides several of the more modern Masters. The value of such 'preparatifs,' has not diminished with the years. 

The fifteenth of January is not a propitious day for embarking on an Atlantic voyage, particularly for one to whom the sea is unknown. But the unpropitious season furnished me with the most interesting and memorable of all my fourteen crossings. Our course took us at once out into what was probably the worst weather to be found. I suffered all the torments, or thought I did, of which soul and body, and that mysterious agent called 'morale,' were capable. 

But there came a day when the ship's heaving and plunging were no more to me than the swing of a bird on a bough. We moved steadily on a surface which was impressive only in having changed its color fundamentally. No one had told me this would happen. 

Sky and water were harmonized in tones devoid of the slightest hint of magenta. No thin, skimmed milk of color here. The grey of the low-hanging sky had been somehow achieved by the simplest use of ivory black, ochre and cream.  True, the small tossing waves had a tint in their curve of the yellowish side of a green summer apple, and the cloud's underside of a blue plum's dark moulding.

We landed in Europe for the first time in Northern Belgium, during the last week of January. Three days at most were spent in Antwerp and Brussels, then we reached Paris and entered it without any memorable foretaste. Of what it was to occupy in the future of my life, I was not vouchsafed a glimpse."

To be continued

(Excerpt from Cecilia Beaux's autobiography "Background with Figures.")

Cecilia Beaux, Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance

"Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: For two years my classes with William Sartain continued, and it then became inconvenient for him to come to us regularly from New York. By that time, as I had been doing some portraits on the side I was able to take a studio and the class painted there, with a model on certain days, without instruction.

Finding myself in a large barren studio I began to think of a picture. I saw it complete in composition, the figures, lighting and accessories. I took an old piece of sketching board and did the composition small, but containing all the important masses, lines and color. The subject was to be my sister, seated, full-length, with her first-born son in her lap. The picture was to be 'landscape' in form, and the figures were to be seen as if one stood over them. The mother in black sat in a low chair, the brown-eyed boy of three almost reclining in her arms. He was to wear a short blue-and-white cotton garment, his bare legs trailing over his mother's knees. Her head was bent over him, and his hands lay upon her very white ones, which were clasped around him.

The first and greatest difficulty was to gain the family's cooperation. My sister would have to bring the boy to town, an hour's trip in the horse-cars, climb eighty-four steps, and probably do this many times. When she had nothing to wear like the design I envisioned, an old black jersey of mine did very well, and, as the picture was to show only one arm fully, I made one black satin sleeve, fitting closely, with a little rich lace at the wrist. Around my sister's knees and lap, and exactly taking the lines of a skirt, we draped a shawl of my grandmother that had been dyed black. When I felt the need of a strong horizontal mass across the canvas behind the group and lower in value than the section above it, I found a piece of panelling in a carpenter's shop and dyed it to look like mahogany.

It took some time to place the figures in precisely the right position on the canvas and to find precisely the right size and proportion for it. Even after the picture was started, I changed the canvas and stretcher twice, and of course leaned heavily upon the original sketch, which contained every essential mass. The labor, the difficulties, I remember perhaps as little as a mother does her hours of travail. My sister bore her part with her usual gallantry. The boy was extremely amused by the novelty of the scene in which he found himself. In the rests he enjoyed running out into the hall with me to get a distant view of the canvas through the open door.

When it was first seen at the Pennsylvania Academy, one of my friends, who had been a student in France, was filled with determination to take the picture back with her to Paris and send it to the Salon. 'The Salon!' I screamed. What insanity it was! But she persisted. Her letter brought me the news of her stretching it and carrying it on top of a cab to the studio of Jean Paul Laurens to get his criticism and advice as to entering it for the Spring Salon. I have no record of the words of the actual interview, but the great man strongly favored her sending it, so she got an impromptu frame and offered it to Fate. 

It had no allies. I was no one's pupil or protegee; it was the work of an unheard-of American. But it was accepted and well hung on a centre wall - and my purpose was formed to go myself to Europe as soon as possible.

To be continued

(Excerpts from Cecilia Beaux's autobiography "Background with Figures.")

Cecilia Beaux, Studying with William Sartain

"Helen Bigelow Merriman" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "The time came when the next opening was ready for me and I for it. I had one acquaintance who began seriously to turn toward painting. She organized a class and took a studio. She had none of my limitations in the way of 'ways and means.' She asked me to join the class. We were to work from a model three mornings in the week, and an artist, Mr. William Sartain, had consented to come over from New York once every fortnight to criticize us. My uncle with his usual generosity paid my share in the cost.

How far he was from the type generally described by story writers! He was a middle-sized man, firmly built, with a strong intellectual head. He was slightly bald and wore a short dark beard. He had been in Munich with Frank Duveneck as a student, and had then passed to long sojourns in Paris. The Romantic School had left its charming memory upon him.

William Sartain in his studio

What I most remember was the revelation his vision gave me of the model. What he saw was there, but I had not observed it. His voice warmed with the perception of tones of color in the modeling of cheek and jaw in the subject, and he always insisted upon the proportions of the head, the summing up of the measure of the individual. This ideal, the difficult to attain in portraiture, is hidden in the large illusive forms. The stronger the head, the less obvious are these, and calling for perception and understanding in their farthest capacity.

When Mr. Sartain rose from my place after a critique and passed on, he left me full of strength to spend on the search, and joy in the beauty revealed. What I had felt before in the works of the great, unknown and remote, now could pass, by my own heart and hands, into the beginning of conquest, the bending of the material to my desire."

To be continued

(Excerpts from Cecilia Beaux's autobiography "Background with Figures." The photo of William Sartain is from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.)

Cecilia Beaux, Lessons from Lithography

Lithograph of fossilized bones
by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "My uncle took me, one fine spring morning, to a lithographing establishment in order that I might see the process of printing. There were floors full of printing presses in action. The great stones lay in them, sliding back and forth to receive contact with the ink rollers. Many of the the stones were five inches thick, two feet by one and a half in horizontal dimensions. In the surface I now saw the beautiful quality of line I had always wondered at, fully accounted for. 

Mr. S., the manager, asked if I would like to draw a head on the stone and sent one to our house, on which I drew the head of a young actress from a photograph. It was printed and used as an advertisement. 

I received another consignment from him which was a group of small fossils, palaeontological specimens. If successful, the plates were to be included in the Report of a Geological Survey of many volumes. I was expected to define and develop the fossils, making the forms more clear and accenting special parts. I sat by a window where there was a steady north light, and under this tiny cavities and prominences became what might have been craters and mountains in the moon. 

My grandmother understood perfectly the high degree of concentration the stone required, and took part in the struggle. She devoted all her mornings to giving me the greatest assistance possible. In her clear, quiet voice, she read aloud untiringly, and never allowed interruption except when I got up to take breath.

As my rendering of minor fossils gave satisfaction to the watchful palaeontologist behind the scenes, who was in fact no less a personage than the famous Edward D. Cope, I was next given the opportunity to draw the portrait of his first-born among fossils, and the heir to all his hopes. It was a complete specimen, the head of an extinct ass that had roamed the plains of the Far West. Next came the skull of a small camel, white and clean, nearly cleared of the rock, and as it took the light boldly, it was not very difficult.

What was to be learned in dealing with obscure and reluctant form, in almost shapeless fossils, and above all the revelation of form in natural daylight, the revealer of truth without emphasis or exaggeration, came home with a force and tenacity that only the truth can apply, and being living truth and led by Nature, hand in hand, it never grew stale and was never exhausted. Having naught to do with fashion, this approach to truth can never go out of fashion, though it may be abused and vulgarized, when it ceases to be truth.

It was not possible to realize at the time what an immense educational opportunity the stone, to a beginner in art, and the fossils, had offered, and which luckily I had the sense, or rather the intuition, to take advantage of."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.)

Cecilia Beaux, Art School

"Man with the Cat: Portrait of Henry
Sturgis Drinker" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "At seventeen life begins to open up very perceptibly. Horizons broaden, consciousness appears, and more of this than desired. Even without brusque changes of circumstance or important events, one might say that the day was altered. One development, however, was clearly marked. I began going to Art School.

It was not a school that became permanent in Philadelphia, though it promised well and was the only one of its kind. A Dutch artist, Van der Whelen, being obliged just as his career was opening, to give up painting on account of eye trouble that threatened blindness, had come to America and under responsible patronage, opened a school. My uncle, who decided, and with great generosity gave me everything that related to my art education, one day escorted me thither.

After a preliminary conversation with my uncle, Van der Whelen asked me if I had ever 'enlairrchet' anything. This turned out to be the Dutch pronunciation of 'enlarged.' I did not know what he meant but thought it safe to say I had not. A small-sized lithography of a bearded old man was then produced, and I was told that I was to begin by making a life-size copy of it in crayon.

The difficulties to be met in the change of scale and the effort of mastering the loose hair and beard gave a zest to the task, which turned out to be not so dull after all, and I got quite a thrill from the tufts of hair around the ears and the shadow of an eyelid upon the pupil. In a day or two the study was finished. Mr. Van der Whelen gave me a sharp look, and said that I need do no more 'enlairrching,' and I passed into the next square."

To be continued

(Excerpts from Cecilia Beaux' autobiography "Background with Figures.")

Cecilia Beaux, Studying with Katherine Drinker

"Lady Darwin (Maud DuPuy),"
a pastel by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "My uncle, who became the directing power at every point in my development, had a relative, Miss Katharine Drinker. Miss Drinker was an artist who devoted herself to the painting of historical and Biblical pictures. Her studio was at the top of an old house at Fifth and Walnut Streets, on Independence Square, so that that exquisite monument standing in its grove of trees, was always near and visible to me as I came and went.

I am glad that the studio was typical, traditional. It was the first studio I ever entered. On its threshold, everyday existence dropped completely out of sight and memory. What windows there were, were covered with hangings nondescript, as they were under the shadow of the skylight, which was upright, like a broad high window and without glare. There was a vast sweeping curtain which partly shut off one side of the room, and this, with other dark corners, contributed to its mystery and suggestiveness.  The place had long been a studio, and bore the signs of this in big, partly obliterated figures, outlines, drawn in chalk upon its dusky wall, opposite the light. 

But the manifestation of what proved to be a life-long first cause and study, that of the miracles of light and what they could develop and hide, were here first revealed to me in all their full volume and simplicity. Objects and people took the light, or were hidden by it, as they are in Rembrandt's paintings. Large spaces of obscurity swept upward from gleaming forehead or fold of silk. This was all an everyday matter in the studio, and it was never mentioned to me, but I ignorantly revelled in its deep enchantment, in no way understood, and asked no questions. I sat nearly all day at an easel with my back to the room and the light.

I was set to copy with Conte crayon on a yellowish paper, very glaring in the light, a series of lithographic drawings. The subjects were beautiful, and I knew it and adored them. It was my introduction to Greek sculpture, as interpreted by 'Julien,' and the prints were very well known as school studies, but not to me. The broad spaces of the drawings, their evolved finality, that permitted not the slightest deviation in scale, measure or direction, put them much farther beyond my powers than I knew.  

But by my sheer ignorance of the difficulty, and a vaulting desire for victory, I overcame these chimeras without remembered struggle. But the quality of the line baffled me completely. The gritty blackness of the Conte crayon, the harsh glare and impervious texture of the yellow paper were untameable. Even the caress of a soft finger tip to unify the line would not avail. My copy was correct - and ugly - a hateful travesty to my eyes. Yet my teacher leaned over me to say that I was doing very well. She did not seem to understand my stammered, almost tearful, complaints."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.)

Cecilia Beaux, First Impressions

"A Little Girl" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "Long before it was discovered that I had more proficiency with a pencil than I had on the piano, I accompanied my aunts on visits to what picture galleries and special exhibitions there were. The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts was at that time quite far downtown, in a dark old building. Memory retains only one impression of our visit there. While my aunts were wandering and examining, I fell behind, intrigued by an enormous oil painting which hung over a descending stairway.

The huge canvas depicted three life-size horses in full career, ridden by enigmatical personages; cloud and flame surrounded; prostrate and suppliant figures filled the foreground. The foremost steed was white with flowing mane and tail, and was rearing in the pride of conquest. The title of the picture was 'Death on the Pale Horse' by Benjamin West. I remained curiously gazing until I was found. It was the first painting I consciously observed.

It must have been several years after this that a private collection was opened by William C. Gibson in Philadelphia to privileged persons on certain days. I was first taken to the gallery on a cold winter day. After our long bleak journey in the horse-car, the entrance, and the door opened by a solemn servant, were not very hopeful; but once inside, at the end of a dark hall shone Paradise itself. Light filtered through immense pale green fronds of lofty ferns.

I had never dreamed of a conservatory before, and my delight was unmixed. But, far more than even this, there were a number of small galleries opening from it where the pictures hung. The lighting, all daylight from above, was soft and equal, and showed every touch of color and value at its best.

My favorites were, first of all, a head of a young man, by Couture. The 'Angelus' itself was there. The pink and polished sweetness of the peasants of Bouguereau and Merle had the appeal of dimpled flesh, limpid eyes, and dewy lips. The great tree by Courbet is one of the pictures most vividly remembered. There were handsome compositions by Gerome, Vibert and Madrazzo.

If I did aught but gaze, if I pondered at all, it was before the Boldini and the Fortuny that I stood longest and puzzled most. I am still thrilled by the recollection of those fresh, pure strokes, mixed with morning light, the pearly light of France, strokes so enigmatical when examined, so wrought with whim and fantasy, yet so sure, with the firmness of reality when one walked away. 'I cannot understand, I love,' I would have thought, if I had known my Tennyson.

I found much more in the gallery than painting. I had my first taste of foreign ways, places, light, palaces, churches, gardens and ceremonies and people of the past, or moving in the scene and atmosphere of old Europe. My embryonic sense took hold, once for all, of something that was mine, and that nothing should cheat me of some day."

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.)

The Ten Portraits of Isabella Stewart Gardner

Isabella Stewart Gardner

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a dedicated and energetic patroness of the arts. In 1917 she explained her motivation for collecting: "Years ago I decided that the greatest need in our Country was Art. We were a very young country and had very few opportunities of seeing beautiful things, works of art. So I determined to make it my life's work if I could." Throughout the years she collected art - and artists - and encouraged and supported them. Her collection is shown at the beautiful Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

She also commissioned ten portraits of herself from some of the finest artists of her age. Here are images of seven of them: 

John Singer Sargent's oil portrait from 1888. She was a high-energy, restless sitter and would continually look out the window to see what was happening on the river outside their home at 152 Beacon Street in Boston. Sargent grew frustrated and after eight unsuccessful attempts was willing to give the entire enterprise up but she was reported to have insisted “as nine was Dante’s mystic number, they must make the ninth try a success," and it was. She loved the painting and thought it the best portrait John ever did, even tried to get Sargent to admit as much. Her husband, on the other hand,  had an opinion altogether different and expressed it in a letter to his wife: "It looks like hell, but looks like you."

 

In spite of of their rocky start, John Sargent and Isabella became fast friends, and towards the end of her life, it was he who asked if she would sit for him. She had suffered a debilitating stroke in December 1919, which had left her right side paralyzed. As Sargent depicts her, pale and fragile, sitting on a day-bed with cushions propped around her, she might seem a diminished figure, but swathed in translucent white cloths and spiritually disembodied, she has the shrouded mystery of a priestess or seer, radiating a haunting, other-worldly presence. It seems to have appealed to her taste for the dramatic and exotic. She said that the new painting was keeping 'everyone's tongue busy wagging' and confessing that "even I think it is exquisite." The portrait might be seen as Sargent's pictorial valediction to a remarkable collector, patron and friend. Mrs. Gardner died less than two years after it was painted. Sargent was named in her will as one of her pallbearers, but he was unable to attend the funeral.

The sense of vitality and artistic flair that she found in Venice - and by which she lived her life - is eloquently captured in Anders Zorn's "Mrs. Gardner in Venice." Painted in 1896 at the Palazzo Barbaro, the portrait captures the moment when Isabella Stewart Gardner, watching fireworks from a balcony, stood in the doorway, arms outstretched and invited her guests to join her to watch the display.

Anders Zorn also made an etching of her.

Dennis Miller Bunker painted her portrait as well.

James McNeill Whistler's depiction of her in "The Little Note in Yellow and Gold," 1886.

Louis Kronberg

To find out more about Isabella see "The Remarkable, Unconventional Isabella."

(Excerpts for Sargent's two pictures are from "John Singer Sargent, The Later Portraits" by Richard Ormund and Elaine Kilmurray.)

Rosa Bonheur, Landscapes

"Landscape with Deer" by Rosa Bonheur

"Rosa Bonheur's love for the countless creatures that served her as models throughout her long life did not lessen her love of scenery, a love that is indicated in every one of her completed pictures. Some of the landscapes found in her studio after her death were works of the highest beauty and feeling. As with her pictures of animals, she had an intuition for atmosphere in landscape - quiet and peace brood amongst the sedges of the forest pool; the haze of harvest heat hangs over the golden sheaves and half obscures the encircling hills.

The rugged side of nature appealed to her perhaps the more strongly. She specially delighted in the reproduction of physical force, latent or in action. In one of the best of her landscapes a mountain stream rushes frothing and turbulent down a rocky gorge, which is bordered on either hand by pine trees. Suddenly there is a sharp fall in the rocks, and the water, divided by a great boulder, rolls in two avalances of white out of sight. A high mountain closes the gorge to the spectotor, and serves as a background for the waterfall. The effect is rugged and strong in the extreme.

Her attitude to all Nature had something in it deeper than the desire for 'good subjects' of the mere maker of pictures. She attempted pictures, so great in conception that few artists of her age and experience would have dared to enter on their execution. From her earliest days as painter she saw Nature on a grand scale, herein showing her temperament, and the wideness of her outlook upon life."

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, Studio Practice

Portrait of Rosa Bonheur with her dog Charly
by Anna Elisabeth Klumpke

Rosa Bonheur’s studio at Château de By

"Madame Consuelo Fould, who painted a portrait of Rosa Bonheur, her right hand resting on the head of a great St. Bernard, whilst a palette and brushes are held in the left, says that Rosa had a horror of anything in the nature of a 'drier,' and of mediums that give immediate effect at the cost of the preservation of the picture. She used her colours without any admixture, leaving them to dry by themselves, sometimes for two years, returning to work upon them at long intervals,and using very little oil. 

She had two sets of palettes, one always kept scrupulously clean, the other covered with every variety of colour. This set, by means of some process known to herself, at the end of a year look like pieces of coloured marble,as they absorbed all the oil. She attached great importance to them, as they enabled her to judge of certain effects of combined colour. 

Her brushes she cleaned herself with the utmost care.Despite her energy she worked slowly,and this combined with her system of allowing some of her pictures -especially the more important ones - to dry so gradually, not infrequently resulted in her patrons being obliged to wait for months for a picture that was practically completed.

The early morning found her in her studio sketching and studying from one of the animals that formed what was a veritable menagerie at By. She found her animals more tractable in the early hours of the day, but she possessed such understanding of their natures, that even the most difficult rarely resisted her influence for long. She loved them, and used to say that although we cannot always understand them, they invariably understand us."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, "Corn Thrashing"

"Corn Thrashing," an unfinished work. The horses
in this are life size.

"It would be impossible to arrive at the exact number of Rosa Bonheur's pictures, as the larger number were never exhibited and are scattered through England and the United States in private houses. Over sixty pictures from her brush appeared in exhibitions, chiefly the Salon, between 1841 and 1899, and a list has been drawn up of some two hundred others which went straight from the artist's studio to the purchaser. 

Yet this large number does not wholly represent the number of her pictures, for it is known that a considerable proportion have been lost to sight. On an average she painted seven pictures a year, and yet despite this haste she would frequently keep a canvas on her easel for years, as for example, 'Corn Thrashing,' upon which she was occupied for two decades, and which was unfinished at her death.

Amongst the mass of drawings and studies found in her studio there was a series of designs which showed how carefully she had built up the arrangement of this picture, and how by constant rejection, re-arrangement, and re-drawing she had finally arrived at a composition that satisfied her. Masses of corn are spread over a field, and over them eleven horses, life size, are galloping. In her sketches she had given the horses every imaginable movement and colour, and death surprised her before she was able to complete the result of her long studies.

Attitude after attitude as is indicated by the papers upon which the sketches were made, were put aside as unsuitable or unnatural for the particular circumstances of the subject, but these poses may be at once recognized in other pictures painted during the long period 'Corn Thrashing' remained upon the easel. These rejected studies served frequently in their turn for the basis of another picture, rapidly painted and bought from her easel before the colours upon it were dry."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.")

Rosa Bonheur, Final Honors and Passing

"Recumbent Stag" by Rosa Bonheur
Watercolour and Gouache over Graphite, 11" x 15"

"In the Salon of 1899, Rosa Bonheur's picture 'Cow and Bull of Auvergne' was hung in a place of honour, and but for the painter's own request that no vote should be given for her work, it would have been awarded a gold medal. The strength, the mastery of detail, the deep knowledge of animals, and the power of expressing her knowledge upon canvas that had characterized her work thirty years before, were still undiminished. 

Now no note of blame, no accusation of neglecting her own country for the sake of fulfilling foreign commissions, was heard. The critics and the public alike welcomed her return to the annual representative exhibition of French art. The artist's fame, her age, her long abstention from sending her work to the Salon, and the universal admiration of the press, all added to the public interest, and the picture was surrounded daily by admiring crowds.

At the height of this success Rosa Bonheur was struck down by congestion of the lungs, and scarcely had the news spread abroad that she was ill, than it was followed by the news that her illness had proved fatal. Her life as an artist ended as it had begun with the sign of her remarkable talents hanging in the Salon. She was buried in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise amidst signs of public respect such as are only accorded to those who have added laurels to the glory of their country."

The grave of Rosa Bonheur
Pere Lachaise Cemetery

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)