Rosa Bonheur (born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur; 16 March 1822 – 25 May 1899) was a French artist known best as a painter of animals ( animalière). She also made sculptures in a realist style. Her paintings include '' Ploughing in the Nivernais'', first exhibited at the

Paris Salon The Salon (), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art event in the Western world. At the ...

of 1848, and now in the

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) () is a museum in Paris, France, on the Rive Gauche, Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts railway station built from 1898 to 1900. The museum holds mai ...

in Paris, and '' The Horse Fair'' (in French: ''Le marché aux chevaux''), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1853 (finished in 1855) and is now in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. Bonheur was widely considered to be the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century. It has been claimed that Bonheur was openly

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

, as she lived with her partner Nathalie Micas for over 40 years until Micas's death, after which she lived with American painter

Anna Elizabeth Klumpke Anna Elizabeth Klumpke (October 28, 1856 – February 9, 1942) was an American portrait and Genre works, genre painter born in San Francisco, California, United States. She is perhaps best known for her portraits of famous women including Eliza ...

. However, others assert that nothing supports this claim.

Early development and artistic training

Bonheur was born on 16 March 1822 in

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( ; ; Gascon language, Gascon ; ) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde Departments of France, department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the Prefectures in F ...

Gironde Gironde ( , US usually , ; , ) is the largest department in the southwestern French region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Named after the Gironde estuary, a major waterway, its prefecture is Bordeaux. In 2019, it had a population of 1,623,749.

, the oldest child in a family of artists.Kuiper, Kathleen
"Rosa Bonheur"
''Encyclopædia Britannica Online'', Retrieved 23 May 2015. Her mother was Sophie Bonheur (née Marquis), a piano teacher; she died when Rosa was eleven. Her father was Oscar-Raymond Bonheur, a

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

and

portrait painter Portrait painting is a Hierarchy of genres, genre in painting, where the intent is to represent a specific human subject. The term 'portrait painting' can also describe the actual painted portrait. Portraitists may create their work by commissio ...

who encouraged his daughter's artistic talents. Though of

Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...

ish origin, the Bonheur family adhered to

Saint-Simonianism Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (; ; 17 October 1760 – 19 May 1825), better known as Henri de Saint-Simon (), was a French political, economic and socialist theorist and businessman whose thought had a substantial influence on po ...

, a Christian socialist sect that promoted the education of women alongside men. Bonheur's siblings included the animal painters

Auguste Bonheur Auguste Bonheur (3 November 1824 in Bordeaux – 21 February 1884 in Bellevue, Seine-et-Oise) was a French painter of animals and bucolic scenes in landscapes. In his compositions he was able to accurately depict the horizon, ambience, lumin ...

and

Juliette Bonheur Juliette Peyrol Bonheur (1830–1891) was a French painter. She was known for her animal paintings. She is the sister of Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899), Auguste Bonheur (1824–1884), and Isidore Bonheur (1827–1901).Galton, Francis ...

, as well as the animal sculptor Isidore Jules Bonheur.

Francis Galton Sir Francis Galton (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911) was an English polymath and the originator of eugenics during the Victorian era; his ideas later became the basis of behavioural genetics. Galton produced over 340 papers and b ...

used the Bonheurs as an example of the eponymous "Hereditary Genius" in his 1869 essay. Bonheur moved to Paris in 1828 at the age of six with her mother and siblings, after her father had gone ahead of them to establish a residence and income there. By family accounts, she had been an unruly child and had a difficult time learning to read, though she would sketch for hours at a time with pencil and paper before she learned to talk. Her mother taught her to read and write by asking her to choose and draw a different animal for each letter of the alphabet. The artist credited her love of drawing animals to these reading lessons with her mother. At school she was often disruptive, and was expelled numerous times. After a failed apprenticeship with a seamstress at the age of twelve, her father undertook her training as a painter. Her father allowed her to pursue her interest in painting animals by bringing live animals to the family's studio for studying. Following the traditional art school curriculum of the period, Bonheur began her training by copying images from drawing books and by sketching plaster models. As her training progressed, she made studies of domesticated animals, including horses, sheep, cows, goats, rabbits and other animals in the pastures around the perimeter of Paris, the open fields of Villiers near

Levallois-Perret Levallois-Perret () is a Communes of France, commune in the Hauts-de-Seine Departments of France, department and Île-de-France Regions of France, region of north-central France. It lies on the right bank of the Seine, some from the Kilometre z ...

, and the still-wild

Bois de Boulogne The Bois de Boulogne (, "Boulogne woodland") is a large public park that is the western half of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine. The land was ceded to the city of Paris by the Em ...

. Boime, Albert
"The Case of Rosa Bonheur: Why Should a Woman Want to be More Like a Man?"
''Art History'' v. 4, December 1981, p. 384-409. At fourteen, she began to copy paintings at the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

. Among her favorite painters were

Nicolas Poussin Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was a French painter who was a leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythologic ...

and

Peter Paul Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens ( ; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish painting, Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque painting, Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens' highly charged comp ...

, though she also copied the paintings of

Paulus Potter Paulus Potter (; 20 November 1625 (baptised) – 17 January 1654 (buried)) was a Dutch painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid sur ...

Frans Pourbus the Younger Frans Pourbus the Younger or Frans Pourbus (II) (Antwerp, 1569 – Paris, 1622)Frans Pourbus (II)
at the Louis Léopold Robert Louis Léopold Robert (13 May 1794 – 20 March 1835) was a Switzerland, Swiss Painting, painter. Biography He was born at La Chaux-de-Fonds (Canton of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel) in Switzerland, but left his native place with the engraver Jean Girar ...

Salvatore Rosa Salvator Rosa (1615 – March 15, 1673) is best known today as an Italian Baroque painter, whose Romanticism, romanticized landscapes and history paintings, often set in dark and untamed nature, exerted considerable influence from the 17th cent ...

and

Karel Dujardin Karel Dujardin (September 27, 1626November 20, 1678) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Although he did a few portraits and a few history paintings of religious subjects, most of his work is small Italianate landscape scenes with animals and peasan ...

. She studied animal

anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...

and osteology in the abattoirs of Paris and dissected animals at the

École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort The National veterinary school of Alfort ( or ''ENVA'') is a French public institution of scientific research and higher education in veterinary medicine, located in Maisons-Alfort, Val-de-Marne, close to Paris. It is operated under the superv ...

, the National

Veterinary Veterinary medicine is the branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, management, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, disorder, and injury in non-human animals. The scope of veterinary medicine is wide, covering all animal species, both ...

Institute in Paris. There she prepared detailed studies that she later used as references for her paintings and sculptures. During this period, she befriended the father-and-son comparative anatomists and

zoologist Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one ...

Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (; 15 April 177219 June 1844) was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theorie ...

and

Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (; 16 December 1805 – 10 November 1861) was a French zoologist and an authority on deviation from normal structure. In 1854 he coined the term ''éthologie'' (ethology). Biography He was born in Paris, the ...

Early success

Rosa Bonheur - Ploughing in Nevers - Google Art Project

A French government commission led to Bonheur's first great success, '' Ploughing in the Nivernais'', exhibited in 1849 and now in the

in Paris. Her most famous work, the monumental '' The Horse Fair'', was completed in 1855 and measured . It depicts the horse market held in Paris, on the tree-lined boulevard de l'Hôpital, near the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, which is visible in the painting's background. There is a reduced version in the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...

in London. This work led to international fame and recognition; that same year she traveled to Scotland and met

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 year ...

, who admired Bonheur's work''.'' In Scotland, she completed sketches for later works including
Highland Shepherd
'' completed in 1859, and
The Highland Raid
'' completed in 1860. These pieces depicted a way of life in the

Scottish highlands The Highlands (; , ) is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Scottish Lowlands, Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Scots language, Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gae ...

that had disappeared a century earlier, and they had enormous appeal to Victorian sensibilities. Bonheur exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts and The Woman's Building at the 1893

World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The ...

in Chicago, Illinois. In 1889 and 1890 she developed a friendship with American sculptor Cyrus Dallin who was studying in Paris. Together they traveled to Neuilly outside of Paris to sketch the animals and cast of

Buffalo Bill Cody William Frederick Cody (February 26, 1846January 10, 1917), better known as Buffalo Bill, was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman. One of the most famous figures of the American Old West, Cody started his legend at the young age o ...

's Wild West Show at their encampment. In 1890 Bonheur painted Cody on horseback. Dallin's work from this period " A Signal of Peace" would also be displayed in Chicago in 1893 and be the first major step in his career. Though she was more popular in England than in her native France, she was decorated with the French

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

by Empress Eugénie in 1865, and was promoted to Officer of the Order in 1894. She was the first female artist to be given this award.

Patronage and the market for her work

Bonheur was represented by the art dealer

Ernest Gambart Jean Joseph Ernest Theodore Gambart (12 October 1814 – 12 April 1902) was a Belgian-born Anglo-French art publisher and dealer who dominated the London art world in the middle of the nineteenth century. Life and career Gambart was born in Kor ...

(1814–1902). In 1855 he brought Bonheur to the United Kingdom, and he purchased the reproduction rights to her work. Many engravings of Bonheur's work were created from reproductions by Charles George Lewis (1808–1880), one of the finest engravers of the day. In 1859 her success enabled her to move to the Château de By near

Fontainebleau Fontainebleau ( , , ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Functional area (France), metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the Kilometre zero#France, centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a Subprefectures in Franc ...

, not far from Paris, where she lived for the rest of her life. The house is now a museum dedicated to her.

Personal life and legacy

Women were often only reluctantly educated as artists in Bonheur's day, and by becoming such a successful artist she helped to open doors to the women artists who followed her. Bonheur was known for wearing men's clothing; she attributed her choice of trousers to their practicality for working with animals (see Rational dress). She lived with her first partner, Nathalie Micas, for over 40 years until Micas' death, and later began a relationship with the American painter

. At a time when lesbianism was regarded as animalistic and deranged by most French officials, Bonheur's outspokenness about her personal life was groundbreaking. In a world where gender expression was policed, Bonheur broke boundaries by deciding to wear trousers, shirts and ties, although not in her painted portraits or posed photographs. She did not do this because she wanted to be a man, though she occasionally referred to herself as a grandson or brother when talking about her family; rather, she identified with the power and freedom reserved for men. It also broadcast her sexuality at a time where the lesbian stereotype consisted of women who cut their hair short, wore trousers, and chain-smoked. Rosa Bonheur did all three. Bonheur never explicitly said she was a lesbian, but her lifestyle and the way she talked about her female partners suggest this. From 1800 until 2013, women in Paris, France were technically forbidden from wearing trousers without permission from police, with only a few exceptions. Enforcement of this largely stopped during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

and after, but in Bonheur's time it was still an issue. In the 1850s, Bonheur had to ask permission from the police to wear trousers, as this was her preferred attire to go to the sheep and cattle markets to study the animals she painted. Bonheur, while taking pleasure in activities usually reserved for men (such as hunting and smoking), viewed her womanhood as something far superior to anything a man could offer or experience. She viewed men as stupid and mentioned that the only males she had time or attention for were the bulls she painted. Having chosen to never become an adjunct or appendage to a man in terms of painting, she decided she would be her own boss and that she would lean on herself and her female partners instead. She had her partners focus on the home life while she took on the role of breadwinner by concentrating on her painting. Bonheur's legacy paved the way for other lesbian artists who didn't favour the life society had laid out for them. Bonheur died on 25 May 1899, at the age of 77, at

Thomery Thomery () is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France, between the forest of Fontainebleau and the river Seine. Thomery station has rail connections to Montereau-Fault-Yonne, Melun and Pa ...

(By), France. She was buried together with Nathalie Micas (1824 – 24 June 1889), her lifelong companion and lover, at

Père Lachaise Cemetery Père Lachaise Cemetery (, , formerly , ) is the largest cemetery in Paris, France, at . With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Buried at Père Lachaise are many famous figures in the ...

, Paris. Klumpke was Bonheur's sole heir after her death, and later joined Micas and Bonheur in the same cemetery upon her death. Bonheur, Micas, and Klumpke's collective tombstone reads, "Friendship is divine affection". Many of her paintings, which had not previously been shown publicly, were sold at auction in Paris in 1900. Along with other realist painters of the 19th century, for much of the 20th century Bonheur fell from fashion, and in 1978 a critic described '' Ploughing in the Nivernais'' as "entirely forgotten and rarely dragged out from oblivion"; however, that same year it was part of a series of paintings sent to China by the French government for an exhibition titled "The French Landscape and Peasant, 1820–1905". Since then her reputation has been somewhat revived. Rosa Bonheur Memorial Park is a

pet cemetery A pet cemetery is a cemetery for pets. Although the veneration and burial of beloved pets has been practiced since ancient times, burial grounds reserved specifically for animals were not common until the late 19th century. History Many hum ...

located in Elkridge, Maryland, established in 1935, and actively operated until 2002. Art historian Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay '' Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?'', considered a pioneering essay for both feminist art history and feminist art theory, contains a section about and titled "Rosa Bonheur." One of Bonheur's works, '' Monarchs of the Forest'', sold at auction in 2008 for just over $200,000. In homage to the painter, four Parisian guinguettes bear the name Rosa Bonheur. The first opened in 2008 in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. It is mentioned at length by Virginie Despentes in her series of novels Vernon Subutex. The second in 2014 on the banks of the Seine at the Port des Invalides, the third in 2017 in

Asnières-sur-Seine Asnières-sur-Seine () is a Communes of France, commune in the Hauts-de-Seine Departments of France, department and Île-de-France Regions of France, region of north-central France. It lies on the left bank of the river Seine, some eight kilometr ...

and the fourth in 2021 in the Bois de Vincennes, home of the Rosa Bonheur Modern Team (RBMT) of various sports teams and a pep band. Each of the four locations of Rosa Bonheur is home to a multilingual pop choir, collectively known as "Viens Chanter Bonheur," which is led by musician and ceramic artist Damien Bousquet. On 16 March 2022,

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

honoured Bonheur with a

Doodle A doodle is a drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be composed of random and abstract art, abstract lines or shapes, generally w ...

to mark the bicentennial of her birth. The Doodle reached five countries: the United States, Ireland, France, Iceland and India. Rosa Bonheur studio and museum

Biographical works

The first biography of Bonheur was published during her lifetime: a pamphlet written by Eugène de Mirecourt, ''Les Contemporains: Rosa Bonheur,'' which appeared just after her Salon success with ''The Horse Fair'' in 1856. Bonheur later corrected and annotated this document. The 1905 book '' Women Painters of the World'' (assembled and edited by Walter Shaw Sparrow) was subtitled "from the time of Caterina Vigri, 1413–1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the present day". The second account was written by Anna Klumpke, Bonheur's companion in the last year of her life. Klumpke's biography, published in 1909 as ''Rosa Bonheur: sa vie, son oeuvre,'' was translated in 1997 by Gretchen Van Slyke and published as ''Rosa Bonheur: The Artist's (Auto)biography,'' so-named because Klumpke had used Bonheur's first-person voice. ''Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur'', edited by Theodore Stanton (the son of

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 ...

), was published in London and New York in 1910. It includes numerous correspondences between Bonheur and her family and friends, in which she describes her art-making practices.Theodore Stanton, ''Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur'', (New York: D. Appleton and company, 1910), Theodore Stanton, ''Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur'', (London: Andrew Melrose, 1910).

List of works

* '' Ploughing in the Nivernais'', 1849 * '' The Horse Fair'', 1852–55 * '' Haymaking in the Auvergne'', 1853–55 * ''The Highland Shepherd'', 1859 * ''A Family of Deer'', 1865 * ''Changing meadows'' (''Changement de pâturages''), 1868 *''Spanish muleteers crossing the Pyrenees'' (''Muletiers espagnols traversent les Pyrénées''), 1875 * ''Weaning the Calves'', 1879 * ''Relay Hunting'', 1887 * ''Portrait of William F. Cody'', 1889 * ''The Monarch of the herd'', 1868

Gallery

File:Rosa Bonheur - Changement de pâturages.jpg, ''Changement de pâturages'' (1863), Hamburger Kunsthalle File:Noon Day Rest by Rosa Bonheur - Rosa Bonheur - ABDAG002173.jpg, alt=Two cows and a horse standing in the shade of a tree in a field. More seated cows in the background, ''Noon Day Rest'' (1877),

Aberdeen Art Gallery Aberdeen Art Gallery is the main visual arts exhibition space in the city of Aberdeen, Scotland. It was founded in 1884 in a building designed by Alexander Marshall Mackenzie, with a sculpture court added in 1905. In 1900, it received the art ...

File:The Pyrenees - Rosa Bonheur - ABDAG002181.jpg, alt=Mountainous landscape with a seated man and two donkeys, ''The Pyrenees'' (1879),

File:The Charcoal Burners - Rosa Bonheur - ABDAG002621.jpg, ''The Charcoal Burners'' (1853),

File:A Stag, by Rosa Bonheur.jpg, ''A Stag (1893),

National Gallery of Ireland The National Gallery of Ireland () houses the national collection of Irish and European art. It is located in the centre of Dublin with one entrance on Merrion Square, beside Leinster House, and another on Clare Street, Dublin, Clare Street. It ...

References

Resources

NMWA.org Collection Profile
- Bonheur article and artwork at NMWA.

External links

*Joseph J. Rishel, �
''Barbaro after the Hunt'' by Marie-Rosalie Bonheur (W1900-1-2)
” in
The John G. Johnson Collection: A History and Selected Works
', a Philadelphia Museum of Art free digital publication.
How France is leveraging a lottery to finance historic preservation
2020

PBS Newshour ''PBS News Hour'', previously stylized as ''PBS NewsHour'', is the news division of PBS and an American daily evening news broadcasting#television, television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS Network affiliate#Member stations, member stat ...

report with interior scenes of Bonheur's

atelier An atelier () is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or vi ...

*
Rosa Bonheur
- Artcyclopedia search
Rosa Bonheur
- Rehs Galleries' biographical information and an image of her painting ''Couching Lion'', 1872

A video discussion about the painting from smarthistory.khanacademy.org
''A life without Compromise''
— Rosa Bonheur biography, artworks and writings on Trivium Art History
''Art and the empire city: New York, 1825-1861''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Bonheur (see index)
"Bonheur, Rosa,--1822-1899."
Library of Congress * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bonheur, Rosa 1822 births 1899 deaths Artists from Bordeaux 19th-century French painters Lesbian painters French lesbian artists French LGBTQ painters Female-to-male cross-dressers French Realist painters French people of Jewish descent Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Equine artists Knights of the Legion of Honour Officers of the Legion of Honour 19th-century French sculptors Sibling artists Society of Women Artists members 19th-century French women painters 19th-century French women sculptors