Rosa Bonheur, a trailblazing French artist who was active in the 19th century, is the subject of a major show at the Musée d’Orsay opening Tuesday. The show, which honors the bicentenary of her birth, is in partnership with the Musée des Beaux-Arts, which is located in Bonheur’s native city of Bordeaux.
Bonheur was known as an animalier, an artist who focuses on the representation of animals. Her paintings of livestock, predatory cats, and horses launched her into a plane of fame and recognition never before granted to a woman artist. In fact, the Empress Eugénie personally traveled to Bonheur’s home to give her the Legion of Honor, the highest French order of merit, and declared that “Genius knows no gender.”
Bonheur’s journey to such heights was, however, marked by tragedy and hardship. According to the exhibition’s wall text, Bonheur’s mother died from sheer exhaustion after working day and night to keep her family alive. The eldest sibling, Bonheur was burdened with taking on family responsibilities.
However, she was also known as a rebellious child, a trait that would change her life immeasurably. She refused an apprenticeship as a seamstress and demanded that her father, who ran a small art school, take her on as a student. Later in her career, when she was barred from going to animal fairs, she would frequent them disguised as a man. She also lived as a lesbian, cohabitating with her partner Nathalie Micas and, after Micas’ death, with the American painter Anna Klumpke.
Bonheur is a beloved figure in France and beyond. Below are five works that made Bonheur the giant she is known to be today.
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Two Rabbits, 1841
Image Credit: Courtesy Wikicommons The first time Bonheur exhibited a work she was just 19 years old. She presented Two Rabbits, made in 1841. The simple, sweet tableau shows two rabbits, one of which is nibbling at a carrot. The work sensitively takes note of the animals’ expressions, enlivening them beyond the cute, farmyard pest. She received no prizes for her work but it was an effective debut for one so young.
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Ploughing in the Nivernais, 1849
Image Credit: Courtesy Wikicommons Ploughing in the Nivernais was a commission by the French government who paid her 3,000 francs to complete the agricultural painting. The painting was inspired by the opening scene in George Sand’s novel La Mare au Diable, in which the text takes note that the scene would be “a noble subject for a painter,” a suggestion that Bonheur took happily. The painting was a sensation and Bonheur was awarded her first gold medal for the work. After being exhibited at the Musée de Luxembourg, it was exhibited at the 1889 World Fair in Paris, which greatly amplified her reputation.
The painting’s startling life-likeness, however, would eventually go out of style, with Paul Cézanne famously commenting that Ploughing in the Nivernais “is horribly like the real thing.” After her death, Bonheur’s work was rarely talked about until feminists revived her story in the ’70s, spurred by Linda Nochlin’s essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” and then again in the late ’90s with Mary Blume’s New York Times article “The Rise and Fall of Rosa Bonheur”.
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The Horse Fair, 1853
Image Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art The Horse Fair is Bonheur’s most famous painting. The sixteen-foot canvas, unveiled at the Paris Salon of 1853, dazzled with its busy composition that featured dozens of complex figures. To paint The Horse Fair, Bonheur repeatedly went to the horse market in male dress to sketch her subject; women were not allowed at the market. The Horse Fair, like so many of her works, focuses on working animals, as opposed to the typical representation of fine riding horses or horses used for war.
The painting traveled extensively after it was unveiled. When it was shown at the home of artist Edwin Henry Landseer, Queen Victoria of England requested a private viewing of the painting in Buckingham Palace. It was eventually sold to Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two studies for The Horse Fair are also held in the Met’s collection.
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Changement de pâturages, 1863
Image Credit: Courtesy Wikicommons Bonheur not only painted scenes that she adapted from real life, but at times took on a more romantic, and, for the times, stylish direction by setting paintings in the past. With works like Changement de pâturages, or Spanish Muleteers Crossing the Pyrenees (1857), she would dress her human subjects in costumes that had last been used centuries ago. These paintings were charming and easy to sell as the art market shifted its attention from large dramatic canvases depicting Biblical or heroic scenes to the quaint and small, as Nochlin described in her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”.
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Couching Lion, 1872
Image Credit: Courtesy Rehs Galleries, New York. The predatory cat was far afield from Bonheur’s usual subject of cows, horses, and other animals found in her immediate landscape. However, as Catherine Hewitt described in her biography of the artist Art is a Tyrant: the Unconventional Life of Rosa Bonheur, a famous and wealthy circus master invited Bonheur to paint a lioness that he kept at his house. The lioness, who went by the name Pierrette, was allowed to wander the grounds as she liked. Bonheur went to visit her with her partner Nathalie. Hewitt wrote that Bonheur was quite wary of observing and being close to Pierrette, but Nathalie approached the animal, stroked it, and nothing happened. From then on, Bonheur was able to paint Pierrette confidently. This new subject was followed with interest and eventually Bonheur got her own lioness, Fatmah, that lived at her house, which caused a stir.