nature. Her strong, sure technique is of high rank. There is nothing weak or effeminate in her style, but marked virility. Comparing her work with Landseer’s, I should say in a general way that his animal figures are more often in repose, and hers in action. Perhaps she was a bit overpraised merely because she was a woman. It was something new in the nine-teenth century for a woman to attain artistic distinction, and still newer to enter a field regarded as distinctively masculine. Her work, too, had the obvious qualities which make for popular favor, rather than the subtleties which appeal to the connoisseur. The very bigness of the Horse Fair and the Ploughing in Nivernais calls forth encomiums from the unsophisticated admirer. Severer critics find her lacking in the subtleties of modeling which Barye’s work has taught us to look for, or in the dashing qualities of style and verve which Géricault exemplified.
Another woman devoting herself to animal art was Henrietta Ronner, born in Holland, and living after marriage in Belgium. For the last thirty years of her life she specialized in cats, and was liberally patronized by royalty and people of wealth. In the nineties she published two beautiful books with reproductions of her pictures. These illustrated volumes and some scattered magazine articles are the only means the general American public has had of knowing the wonderful work of this cat artist. It is to be hoped that time will open these treasures to us all. Some popular cat pictures in wide circulation among the dealers are by Adam and Lambert.
