Concerning Cats 



black Newfoundland dog named Priam, with a pert 

 cockatoo named Coco, dwell together in a roomy 

 house in its own grounds, back a little from the 

 Charleroi Road. Madame Ronner has a good son to 

 care for her, and she loves the animals, who are both 

 her servants and her friends. Every day she spends 

 three good hours of the morning in her studio, paint- 

 ing her delightful cat pictures with the energy of a 

 young artist and the expert precision which we 

 know so well. She was sixteen when she succeeded 

 in painting a picture which was accepted and sold at 

 a public exhibition at Dusseldorf. This was a study 

 of a cat seated in a window and examining with great 

 curiosity a bumble-bee; while it would not compare 

 with her later work, there must have been good qual- 

 ity in it, or it would not have got into a Dusseldorf 

 picture exhibition at all. At any rate, it was the 

 beginning of her successful career as an artist. 

 From that time she managed to support herself and 

 her father by painting pictures of animals. For 

 many years, however, she confined herself to paint- 

 ing dogs. Her most famous picture, " The Friend of 

 Man," belongs to this period — a pathetic group 

 composed of a sorrowing old sand-seller looking down 

 upon a dying dog still harnessed to the little sand- 

 wagon, with the two other dogs standing by with 

 wistful looks of sympathy. When this picture was 

 exhibited, in i860, Madame Ronner's fame was es- 

 tablished permanently. 



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