If Mme. Ronner's family groups are distinctly artificial in composition, each kitling playing its little part in a manner too effective for individual caprice, her simpler studies are open to no such untimely criticism. She has painted placid meditative cats, immersed in thought or sinking sweetly into slumber, that charm our souls with the dignity of their egotism, the frank expression of their supreme self-love. The weakness of her work is possibly its aristocratic narrowness of field. Like Watteau, she is a "Prince"—or Princess—"of Court Painters," never wandering from the sumptuous atmosphere of ease and elegance and repose. Her earlier pictures were not cast in this mould; but for many years her pussies have been soft pampered playthings, who frolic through life without a care, and whose only burden is the courtly one,—ennui. What Mr. Pater says of Watteau's men and women might well apply to Mme. Ronner's cats.
"Half in masquerade, playing the drawing-room or garden comedy of life, these persons have upon them, not less than the landscape he composes, and among the accidents of which they group themselves with such a perfect fittingness, a certain light we should seek for in vain upon anything real."
In this engaging mummery, Mme. Ronner's beau-
