April 19, 2024 Hello , In 1830s France, art school barred women from classes, though they could learn from private tutors or academies that door opened only for the wealthy. Rosa Bonheur's family did not have money. Her great fortune came from the
artistic talent running in their veins and her father's belief in equal opportunity for women. Even those advantages did not clear all the obstacles standing in the way of Rosa's desire to follow her passion for art and sculpture. Her inner strength, independent spirit and dedication to craft vaulted her to the
height of the 19th Century art world.
Rosa Bonheur: Icon of Female Emancipation and Incredible Artist
In 19th Century France, the foundation of art education was to practice drawing human figures, which students learned by studying live nude models. Rosa could not be permitted such a thing. Viewing nude bodies could endanger a young woman's moral
development. Rosa chose to paint and sculpt animals instead of people. She began to learn drawing and painting at home at her father's knee. Oscar-Raymond Bonheur was a landscape and portrait painter and encouraged her abilities and interest. Her mother, Sophie Bonheur, also had a huge influence on Rosa, who loved to sketch and could
be entertained for hours with pencil and paper before she even learned to talk. Still, Rosa was an impulsive child. She had no patience when it came time for her to read and write. Her mother taught her and sparked her love of drawing animals by sitting Rosa down and asking her to draw a different animal for each letter of the alphabet. By age ten, she sketched animals in the parks surrounding Paris, and when they moved to the city her father allowed her to keep pets, including a sheep which lived on the balcony of the family’s 6th floor apartment. But Rosa knew she could not progress without the close study of bodily structure. With no access to formal training in a studio or classroom, Rosa taught herself
in a slaughterhouse.
HAPPINESS is the first existing portrait of Rosa Bonheur,
painted by her brother Auguste François Bonheur in 1848. Rosa's siblings also included animal painter Juliette Bonheur and animal sculptor Isidore Jules Bonheur. Now, the French have a lovely sounding word for slaughterhouse: abattoir. But that does not change the smells, sights or sounds that accompany the butchering of animals. Rosa spent hours at a slaughterhouse in Paris observing the muscles and bones of animals. This was normal for male artists, but Rosa was the first woman to do it. She also attended fairs where she studied the way horses moved their bodies, and dissected animals at the National Veterinary Institute in Paris. At age 19, Rosa first had her work accepted for exhibit at the Paris Salon renowned for supporting traditional artists. One of her two entries depicted two rabbits. It got some buzz, and she would be awarded a bronze and a gold medal at later Salons.
Two Rabbits, 1840, Musée des Beaux Arts, Bordeaux The author of a biography of Rosa stated: "She was so gifted.... She painted as well as a man, they said at the
time." Rosa would not have appreciated the sentiment. She wasn't raised that way.
"My father, this enthusiastic apostle of humanity, has told me many times that the mission of woman was to lift up humanity, which is the Messiah of future ages. I owe to their doctrines the great and proud
ambition which I conceived for the sex to which I am proud to belong, and whose independence I shall maintain until my last day." One independent decision Rosa made early was to wear men's clothing when she went to the slaughterhouses and horse fairs. She cut her hair short and was often seen in a fedora hat, smoking cigarettes and even riding astride like a man. When
invited to a formal public event, she would write and ask permission not to dress in women's clothing.
Edouard Louis Dubufe, Portrait of Rosa Bonheur 1857. Symbolic of her work as an Animalière, the bull was painted by Bonheur herself.
Rosa lived with another woman, painter Nathalie Micas for nearly forty years. She met Nathalie in her teens and was heartbroken when the woman died in1889. Some years later she developed a relationship with American artist Anna E. Klumpke. "[Rosa] broadcast her sexuality at a time where the lesbian stereotype consisted of women who cut their hair short, wore trousers, and chain-smoked," Bonnie Zimmerman writes in The Encyclopedia of Lesbian Histories and Cultures. "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.
Perhaps Rosa's most well-regarded painting The Horse Fair was praised by the critics when it was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in May 1853.
The Horse Fair (1852–55; Rosa Bonheur - Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The scene dealers
selling horses at the horse market held on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital in Paris and the dome of La Salpêtrière is visible in the background.
Rosa's work is considered representative among the best of both men and women painters in the styles of Realism and Naturalism of the 19th Century. She became
largely forgotten as artistic styles changed. Her recent rediscovery is due in part to her recognition as a woman not bound by the binary gender norms and accepted feminine roles of her time.
Portrait by Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, Rosa Bonheur in her studio in
Thoméry.
At the age of 37, Rosa's career had taken off and she purchased a castle southeast of Paris on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest, Château de By. She remodeled the structure to make a comfortable home and include a large light-filled
studio. Her unconventional attitudes for the time included her views on nature. The preservation of the Fontainebleau Forest was important to her, and she believed animals had souls. Ahead of her time in the way she dressed and behaved French painter Rosa Bonheur led the way for a generation of women artists.
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Sources https://paris-blog.org/tag/der-wald-von-fontainebleau/#_ftnref2
Planning a visit to France? You can stay at the Château de By where Rosa Bonheur built her dream studio around 1860 and lived until her death in 1899. The castle remains intact and features a museum, tearoom and culture events all open to the public.
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