Rosa Bonheur

Lore & Background

Bonheur was born the oldest child in a family of artists. Her father, Oscar-Raymond Bonheur, a landscape and portrait painter, encouraged her talents. After her mother died when Rosa was eleven, her father trained her as a painter. She began by copying images from drawing books and sketching plaster models, later studying domesticated animals in pastures around Paris. At fourteen she copied paintings at the Louvre, favoring Nicolas Poussin, Peter Paul Rubens, and others. She studied animal anatomy in Paris abattoirs and dissected animals at the École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort, befriending the comparative anatomists Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

Her first major success was The Horse Fair, exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1853 and completed in 1855. The painting sparked debate and controversy, helping her enter the international art world. In 1856 she traveled to England and Scotland with her partner Nathalie Micas, meeting Queen Victoria and John Ruskin. She later exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Bonheur was represented by art dealer Ernest Gambart, who bought The Horse Fair for forty thousand francs and displayed it in England, where it was studied by Queen Victoria. Her success enabled her to move to the Château de By near Fontainebleau in 1859, where she lived for the rest of her life.

Reader's Guide

Rosa Bonheur's significance lies in her unprecedented success as a female artist in the nineteenth century, a time when women were often reluctantly educated as artists. By becoming the most famous female painter of her era, she helped open doors for women artists who followed. Her work, particularly The Horse Fair, erased doubts that a woman could produce such large-scale, technically accomplished paintings. Bonheur was openly lesbian, living with Nathalie Micas for over 40 years and later with American painter Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, though some assert nothing supports speculation about her sexuality. She wore men's clothing for practicality and as a statement of freedom, broadcasting her sexuality at a time when lesbianism was regarded as animalistic by most French officials. Her legacy includes the Château de By, now a museum dedicated to her, and her role as a pioneer in both art and gender expression.

Did You Know?

• Bonheur was the first female artist to be awarded the French Legion of Honour, decorated by Empress Eugénie in 1865 and promoted to Officer in 1894.
• She studied animal anatomy by dissecting animals at the École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort in Paris.
• Her painting The Horse Fair measures eight by sixteen feet (2.4 by 4.9 m) and depicts the horse market near the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital.
• Francis Galton used the Bonheur family as an example of 'Hereditary Genius' in his 1869 essay.