From her earliest infancy, Rosa Bonheur showed signs of the talent that has placed her very high as a painter of animals. Before she could walk she would amuse herself for hours with a pencil and a piece of paper, It was then that she began to study animal life with a minuteness extraordinary in so young a girl. The art of Rosa Bonheur was her life. She lived only for her work, applying herself to its least details with sincerity and vigour, which were the essenti al traits of her character. There was a strongly masculine strain in her temperament, and this found its expression through her brush. Her pictures possess no feminine soft ness or subtlety; they are fi rm in outline, assured and masterly in colour, and so easily understood by all the world that the profound knowledge they display is frequently over-looked. It was with the Ploughing in Nivernais, exhibited in 1849, that Rosa Bonheur fi rst achieved the positi on she occupied unti l her death. Its force and simplicity, its fi delity to nature, gave the picture an instant success, but she touched something more than success; she achieved fame.