Rosa Bonheur Classic Reprint PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII LETTERS TO FRIENDS The character of the correspondence of a good letter-writer changes radically in tone and nature with the character of the person or circle to whom the epistles are addressed. This is especially true when the writer is of a sensitive, artistic temperament. Striking instances of this fact are found in the letters of Rosa Bonheur, and some good examples of it are given in the present chapter. The reader has already seen how Rosa Bonheur wrote and thought when dashing off letters to her brothers and sister. The family tie, always so strong in France, was especially so in this case, where all were bound together by a common love of art and where all were working to win ease and fame in the same calling. Love and affection are naturally the predominant note. "She always spoke of the various members of her family in the tendercst terms," writes M. Paul Chardin. I would now invite attention to Rosa Bonheur's letters to her friends which are purposely presented in groups, -either in order to bring out more clearly different sides of the artist's complex nature, or because it is chiefly one episode that runs through them. I begin with the long series addressed to the different members of the talented Mene-Cain families. This remarkable group of artists consisted of Pierre Jules Mene (1810--79), a most prolific animal sculptor; his son-in-law, Auguste Cain (1822-94), a pupil of Rude, also a distinguished animal sculptor, several of whose best works adorn the parks of Paris; and the two sons of the latter--Georges Cain, painter, writer on art and archaeology, and conservator of the Carnavalet Museum; and Henri Cain, painter and dramatist, whose wife, Julia Guiraudon, was a well-known singer of the Opera Comique. Henri...