Rosa Bonheur
The animal painter who became a worldwide sensation.
Rosa Bonheur studied animals in slaughterhouses and at markets. Her Horse Fair was a triumph, and she was given permission to wear trousers.
Rosa Bonheur was born in Bordeaux in 1822. Her father, Raymond Bonheur, was a painter and a follower of a utopian socialist movement that advocated equality between the sexes. The family moved to Paris, and her mother died when Rosa was eleven. Her father taught her to paint, and she made copies in the Louvre. All four siblings became artists.
Rosa loved animals and wanted to depict them accurately. She studied anatomy, visited slaughterhouses and horse markets and kept many animals herself. To move freely in such places she obtained police permission to wear trousers, something women were otherwise not allowed to do in public. She won a gold medal at the Salon of 1848, and the state commissioned Ploughing in the Nivernais (1849), now in the Musée d'Orsay.
Her greatest success was The Horse Fair (1852–55), a huge painting of horses being led in a swirling movement at a market in Paris. It is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It was shown in Britain, where she became a celebrity and met Queen Victoria. Her pictures circulated as engravings and were very popular in Britain and the United States.
In 1860 she bought a château at By near the forest of Fontainebleau, where she lived with her animals. Her life partner was Nathalie Micas and, after Micas's death, the artist Anna Klumpke. In 1865 Empress Eugénie awarded her the Legion of Honour, the first woman artist to receive it. When Buffalo Bill visited France in 1889 she painted his portrait.
Rosa Bonheur died in 1899. Her realistic animal paintings were considered old-fashioned in the 20th century, but she has again attracted wide attention, both as an artist and as a woman who lived by her own rules. Her château is now a museum.