Rosa Bonheur
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox artist 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Her paintings include Ploughing in the Nivernais,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> first exhibited at the Salon of 1849, and now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and The Horse Fair (in French: Le marché aux chevaux),<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> which was exhibited at the Salon of 1853 (finished in 1855) and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Bonheur was widely considered to be the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century.Template:Clarify<ref>Janson, H. W., Janson, Anthony F. History of Art. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. 6th edition. Template:ISBN, page 674.</ref>
It has been claimed that Bonheur was openly lesbian, as she lived with her partner Nathalie Micas for over 40 years until Micas's death. After that she lived with American painter Anna Elizabeth Klumpke.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> However, others assert that nothing supports this claim.<ref name="nytimes1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Early development and artistic training
Bonheur was born on 16 March 1822 in Bordeaux, Gironde, the oldest child in a family of artists.<ref name="Kuiper">Kuiper, Kathleen. "Rosa Bonheur", Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Retrieved 23 May 2015.</ref> Her mother was Sophie Bonheur (née Marquis), a piano teacher; she died when Rosa was eleven. Her father was Oscar-Raymond Bonheur, a landscape and portrait painter who encouraged his daughter's artistic talents.<ref name=GroveArt>Template:Cite book</ref> Though of Jewish origin,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> the Bonheur family adhered to Saint-Simonianism, a Christian socialist sect that promoted the education of women alongside men. Bonheur's siblings included the animal painters Auguste Bonheur and Juliette Bonheur, as well as the animal sculptor Isidore Jules Bonheur. Francis Galton used the Bonheurs as an example of the eponymous "Hereditary Genius" in his 1869 essay.<ref>Galton, Francis. Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences. Second edition. (London: MacMillan and Co, 1892), p. 247. Original 1869.</ref>
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.<ref>Mackay, James, The Animaliers, E.P. Dutton, Inc., New York, 1973</ref> Her mother taught her to read and write by asking her to choose and draw a different animal for each letter of the alphabet.<ref>Rosalia Shriver, Rosa Bonheur: With a Checklist of Works in American Collections (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1982) 2-12. (It must be said that, as a reference source this book is itself riddled with inaccuracies and mis-attributions but it accords with the consensus account on this matter.)</ref> The artist credited her love of drawing animals to these reading lessons with her mother.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref>
At school, she was often disruptive and was expelled numerous times.<ref>Theodore Stanton, Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur (New York: D. Appleton and company, 1910), Theodore Stanton, Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur (London: Andrew Melrose, 1910).</ref> 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.<ref name=DWA>Template:Cite book</ref>
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, and the still-wild Bois de Boulogne.<ref name=Boime>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.</ref> At fourteen, she began to copy paintings at the Louvre.<ref name=GroveArt /> Among her favorite painters were Nicolas Poussin and Peter Paul Rubens, though she also copied the paintings of Paulus Potter, Frans Pourbus the Younger, Louis Léopold Robert, Salvatore Rosa, and Karel Dujardin.<ref name=Boime />
She studied animal anatomy and osteology in the abattoirs of Paris and dissected animals at the École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort, the National Veterinary Institute in Paris.<ref>Wild Spirit: The Work of Rosa Bonheur by Jen Longshaw</ref> 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 zoologists, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.<ref>Ashton, Dore and Denise Browne Hare. Rosa Bonheur: A Life and a Legend, (New York: Viking, 1981, 206pp.</ref>
Early success and development of career
Bonheur's first major success can be attributed to The Horse Fair, which was first displayed at the Paris Salon in 1853. The painting was started in 1851 and completed in 1855.<ref name=":13">Bonheur, Rosa, et al., editors. Rosa Bonheur - All Nature’s Children: Musée Des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, 24 May - 29 August 1997; Musée de l’Ecole de Barbizon-Auberge Ganne, Barbizon, 19 September - 18 November 1997; Dahesh Museum, New York, 17 December 1997 - 21 February 1998. New York, 1998.</ref> It measures eight by sixteen feet (2.4 by 4.9 m)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}, sketch for the London version; the sketch for the New York version is in the Ludwig Nissen Foundation, see: C. Steckner, in: Bilder aus der Neuen und Alten Welt. Die Sammlung des Diamantenhändlers Ludwig Nissen, 1993, p. 142 and spaeth.net Template:Webarchive</ref> and 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 that can be found in the National Gallery located in London.<ref>The Horse Fair, National Gallery</ref> Bonheur had been displaying her work at the Paris Salon for several years before displaying The Horse Fair, earning medals and smaller praise.<ref name=":13" /> This even resulted in the commissioning of Ploughing in the Nivernais from the state, which was exhibited in 1849 and is now on display in the Musée d'Orsay located in Paris.<ref name="orsay2">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Due to The Horse Fair sparking debate and controversy among critics and collectors when it was first displayed at the Paris Salon, it allowed Bonheur to create a public image and insert herself into the international art world. One such debate was that Comte de Nieuwerkerke (1811 - 1892) implied that Bonheur had been commissioned by the state to create the work, though there is no known documentation to back said implication, and Bonheur herself went through the effort of discrediting it. In 1856, Bonheur traveled to England and Scotland with Micas, where she met Queen Victoria, John Ruskin, and other major British artists.<ref name=":13" /> In Scotland, she completed sketches and studies for later works such as Highland Shepherd, completed in 1859, The Highland Raid, completed in 1860, and other paintings.<ref name=":1" /> These pieces depicted a way of life in the Scottish Highlands that had disappeared a century earlier, and had an 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 in Chicago, Illinois.<ref name="Nichols">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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's Wild West Show at their encampment.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> 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 by Empress Eugénie in 1865, and was promoted to Officer of the Order in 1894.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web
}}</ref> She was the first female artist to be given this award.<ref name=DWA /><ref name="Phaidon Editors">Template:Cite book</ref>
Patronage and the market for her work
Bonheur was represented by the art dealer Ernest Gambart (1814–1902). It's unknown when the two of them first met, but by 1854, the two were on close terms. Gambart served as a friend, sponsor, and promoter for Bonheur's work and went to great lengths to ensure her work would be pushed to wider audiences.<ref name=":13" /> By 1855, Gambart had bought The Horse Fair for forty thousand francs so that he could display the painting in an exhibition of French art located in England.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Through this exhibition, Bonheur's work was recognized by several English critics, such as William Rossetti, who commented on it positively. Regardless of the positive attention that Bonheur's work gained, she still received backlash for the fact that she was a woman artist. But through The Horse Fair being displayed in England, even at one point being moved to Buckingham Palace for a brief time to be studied by Queen Victoria, it erased all doubts that Bonheur's work was made by herself and paved the way for her success.<ref name=":13" />
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, 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Bonheur was known for wearing men's clothing;<ref>Britta C. Dwyer, "Bridging the gap of difference: Anna Klumpke's "union" with Rosa Bonheur", Out of context. (New York: Greenwood Press, 2004), p. 69-79.; Laurel Lampela, "Daring to be different: a look at three lesbian artists", Art Education v.54 no. 2 (March 2001), p. 45-51. and Gretchen Van Slyke, "The sexual and textual politics of dress: Rosa Bonheur and her cross-dressing permits", Nineteenth-Century French Studies v. 26 no. 3-4 (Spring/Summer 1998) p. 321-35.</ref> she attributed her choice of trousers to their practicality for working with animals (see Rational dress).<ref>Janson: History of Art, page 929</ref>
She lived with her first partner, Nathalie Micas, for over 40 years until Micas' death, and later began a relationship with the American painter Anna Elizabeth Klumpke.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> At a time when lesbianism was regarded as animalistic and deranged by most French officials, Bonheur's outspokenness about her personal life was groundbreaking.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
.jpg){kind=link}
In a world where gender expression was policed,<ref name="Boime 1981">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> It also broadcast her sexuality at a time when 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.<ref>Zimmerman, Bonnie (2013). Encyclopedia of Lesbian Histories and Cultures. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis. p. 125. Template:ISBN.</ref> 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.<ref name="Boime 1981" />
From 1800 until 2013, women in Paris, France, were technically forbidden from wearing trousers without permission from the police, with only a few exceptions. Enforcement of this largely stopped during World War I and afterward, but in Bonheur's time, it was still an issue.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Bonheur died on 25 May 1899, at the age of 77, at Thomery (By), France.<ref name="Kuiper" /> She was buried together with Nathalie Micas (1824 – 24 June 1889), her lifelong companion and lover, at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. Klumpke was Bonheur's sole heir after her death,<ref>"The late Rosa Bonheur's relatives have been defeated in their contest over the great painter's will. It will be remembered that Miss Klumpke, the artist, was the legatee, and the courts have decided largely in her favor, all of the property, except the paintings, being awarded her, while the proceeds of the paintings, which are to be sold at auction, are to be equally divided between Miss Klumpke and the relatives." "Foreign Notes," Mark Hopkins Institute Review of Art, Sept. 1900, vol. 1 no. 2, p. 17.</ref> 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".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Many of her paintings, which had not previously been shown publicly, were sold at auction in Paris in 1900.<ref>Template:Cite EB1911</ref><ref>Galerie Georges Petit. 1er. Tome, Catalogue des tableaux par Rosa Bonheur, May 30-June 2, 1900. 2eme Tome, Aquarelles, dessins, gravures par Rosa Bonheur, June 5–8, 1900.</ref>
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".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Since then, her reputation has been somewhat revived.
Rosa Bonheur Memorial Park is a pet cemetery 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,<ref name="rijsingen">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
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, 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 honoured Bonheur with a Doodle to mark the bicentennial of her birth.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Doodle reached five countries: the United States, Ireland, France, Iceland and India.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Biographical works
.jpg){kind=link}
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.<ref>Eugène de Mirecourt, Les Contemporains: Rosa Bonheur (Paris: Gustave Havard, 15 Rue Guénégaud, 1856) 20.</ref> Bonheur later corrected and annotated this document.Template:Citation needed
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.<ref>Anna Klumpke, Rosa Bonheur: Sa Vie, Son Oeuvre, (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1909), Anna Klumpke, Rosa Bonheur: The Artist's (Auto)Biography, trans. Gretchen Van Slyke (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).</ref>
Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur, edited by Theodore Stanton (the son of Elizabeth Cady Stanton), 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.<ref>Theodore Stanton, Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur, (New York: D. Appleton and company, 1910), Theodore Stanton, Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur, (London: Andrew Melrose, 1910).</ref>
List of works
- Ploughing in the Nivernais, 1849
- The Horse Fair, 1852–1855
- Haymaking in the Auvergne, 1853–1855
- 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
-
Changement de pâturages (1863), Hamburger Kunsthalle
-
Noon Day Rest (1877), Aberdeen Art Gallery
-
The Pyrenees (1879), Aberdeen Art Gallery
-
The Charcoal Burners (1853), Aberdeen Art Gallery
-
A Stag (1893), National Gallery of Ireland
See also
- Rosa Bonheur Memorial Park
- Template:Ill (Rosa Bonheur Prize)
- Women artists
References
Resources
- NMWA.org Collection Profile - Bonheur article and artwork at NMWA.
Further reading
- Dore Ashton, Rosa Bonheur: A Life and a Legend. Illustrations and Captions by Denise Browne Harethe. New York: A Studio Book/The Viking Press, 1981 NYT Review
- Catherine Hewitt, Art is a Tyrant: The Unconventional Life of Rosa Bonheur. UK Published by Icon Books Ltd in 2020.
- Isabella Zuralski-Yeager, "Tedesco Frères Selling Rosa Bonheur: An Inquiry into Dealers’ Stock Books." The Getty Research Journal, vol. 16, 2022, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/721990.
External links
- Joseph J. Rishel, “Barbaro after the Hunt by Marie-Rosalie Bonheur (W1900-1-2)Template:Dead link,” in The John G. Johnson Collection: A History and Selected WorksTemplate:Dead link, a Philadelphia Museum of Art free digital publication.
- How France is leveraging a lottery to finance historic preservation, 2020 PBS Newshour report with interior scenes of Bonheur's atelier
- Template:Art UK bio
- Rosa Bonheur - Artcyclopedia search
- Rosa Bonheur - Rehs Galleries' biographical information and an image of her painting Couching Lion, 1872
- Rosa Bonheur Plowing in the Nivernais (1849). 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
- Template:FrenchSculptureCensus
- Template:NPG name
Template:Rosa Bonheur Template:New Woman (late 19th century) Template:Authority control (arts)
- Pages with broken file links
- 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
- Dress reformers