More fortunate than many other great artists, whose merits have been slowly acknowledged, Rosa Bonheur has been a favorite with the public from her first appearance. Her vigorous originality, her perfect mastery of the technicalities and mechanical details of her art, and the charm of a style at once fresh and simple, and profoundly and poetically true, ensured for her productions a sympathetic appreciation and a rapid sale. She had produced, up to June, 1858, thirty-five paintings; and many more, not exhibited, have been purchased by private amateurs. In these the peculiar aspect of crag, mountain, valley, and plain--of trees and herbage; the effects of cloud, mist, and sunshine, and of different hours of the day--are as profoundly and skillfully rendered as are the outer forms and inner life of the animals around which the artist, like nature, spreads the charm and glory of her landscapes. She has already made a fortune, but has bestowed it entirely on others, with the exception of a little farm a few miles from Paris, where she spends a great deal of her time. Such is her habitual generosity, and so scrupulous is her delicacy in all matters connected with her art, that it may be doubted whether she will ever amass any great wealth for herself. Her port-folios contain nearly a thousand sketches, eagerly coveted by amateurs; but she regards these as a part of her artistic life, and refuses to part with them on any terms. A little drawing that accidentally found its way into the hands of a dealer, a short time since, brought eighty pounds in London. Rosa had presented it to a charity, as she now and then does with her drawings. Demands for paintings reach her from every part of the world; but she refuses all orders not congenial to her talent, valuing her own probity and dignity above all price. The award of the jury in 1853--in virtue of which the authoress of “The Horse-market” was enrolled among the recognized masters of the brush, and as such exempted from the necessity of submitting her works to the examining committee previous to their admission to future exhibitions--entitled her, according to French usage, to the cross of the Legion of Honor. This decoration was refused to the artist by the emperor _because she was a woman_! The refusal, repeated after her brilliant success of 1855, naturally excited the indignation of her admirers, who could not understand why an honor that would be accorded to a certain talent in a man should be refused to the same in a woman. But, though Rosa was included in the invitation to the state dinner at the Tuileries, always given to the artists to whom the Academy of Fine Arts has awarded its highest honor, the refusal of the decoration was maintained, notwithstanding numerous efforts made to obtain a reversal of the imperial decree.