The Horse Fair. Rosa Bonheur · Public domain · source

Rosa Bonheur

Public domain1822-1899·French·painting·Wikipedia ↗

Who

Born on 16 March 1822 in Bordeaux, she was taught by her father, the painter Oscar-Raymond Bonheur, and learned animal anatomy in the Paris slaughterhouses and at the veterinary school at Alfort. From 1859 she lived and worked at the Chateau de By, at Thomery on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, where she died on 25 May 1899.

Why they matter

She was the great animal painter of her century, and she got there with subjects the Salon thought belonged to men: oxen, horses, sheep, painted at full scale from close study. Ploughing in the Nivernais, a State commission shown at the Salon of 1849, and The Horse Fair, shown at the Salon of 1853 and then toured through Britain, made her name on both sides of the Channel. In 1865 she became the first woman artist to receive the Legion d'honneur, and in 1894 the first woman to be made an officer of it.

What to buy

Prints: The Horse Fair is the picture to own, and it was built to be reproduced. The dealer Ernest Gambart had her paint the reduced version now in the National Gallery, London, for the engraver Thomas Landseer to work from, and Landseer's large engraving is what spread the image widely. Nineteenth-century impressions, published by Gambart in London, still come up at auction and are the period way to own the picture; buy one whose lettering naming Landseer and the publisher is visible in the listing photographs. For a modern print, choose one that names the Met or the National Gallery, London as the source. Books: the standard modern account is Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), edited by Sandra Buratti-Hasan and Leila Jarbouai (Flammarion, 2022), the catalogue of the bicentenary retrospective at Bordeaux and the Musee d'Orsay, in French only. Originals: not listed here. The major paintings are in museums, and anything sold as "after Rosa Bonheur" is a copy by someone else.

Notes

The Horse Fair at the Met measures about 2.4 by 5 metres; Cornelius Vanderbilt bought it at auction in 1887 and gave it to the museum the same year. The National Gallery's version was bequeathed by Jacob Bell in 1859. Ploughing in the Nivernais is at the Musee d'Orsay. Her house and studio at By, bought in 2017 by Katherine Brault from the heirs of the painter Anna Klumpke, Bonheur's companion in her last years, is open to visitors as a museum; it keeps a Native American costume given to her by Buffalo Bill. Her earlier companion, Nathalie Micas, lived with her for more than forty years until Micas died in 1889.

Story

To draw the horses for The Horse Fair, Bonheur went twice a week, for eighteen months, to the horse market on the Boulevard de l'Hopital in Paris. To avoid drawing attention she dressed as a man, and that was not simply a choice: since 1800 a police ordinance had made women in Paris ask the Prefecture for permission to wear men's clothes. One of her permits survives. Dated 12 May 1857, it allows her to wear men's clothing "for reasons of health", forbids her to appear in it at theatres, balls or other public gatherings, and is valid for six months.

The rule she was working around outlived her by more than a century: the ordinance was only formally repealed on 31 January 2013.

The Empress Eugenie called on her at By unannounced on 14 June 1864. On 10 June 1865 she came again, in the last days of a regency, and pinned the cross of the Legion d'honneur on her. Bonheur, caught in her working clothes, had just time to change into a dress. "I wanted the last act of my regency," the Empress told her, "to show that in my eyes genius has no sex." She was the first woman artist to receive it.

Key works

Ploughing in the Nivernais (1849) - Musee d'Orsay, Paris
The Horse Fair (1852-1855) - The Met, New York
The Horse Fair (reduced version) (1855) - National Gallery, London

Rosa Bonheur

Who

Why they matter

What to buy

Notes

Story

Key works

In museum collections

See the work

Prints

Books

See also