Rosa Bonheur
1822 - 1899
Marie-Rosa Bonheur, usually called Rosa Bonheur was a French realist painter and sculptor. She was born at Bordeaux, 1822.
Bonheur came from very artistic family. Her father was a landscape painter taught by Henri de Saint-Simon. She had sisters, Auguste Bonheur, artist and Isidore Jules Bonheur, sculptor. And she was the instructor of Anna Elizabeth Klumpke.
She was taught to paint by her father since, as a female, she could not at the time attend art school. She showed a great affinity for animals, and made them her specialty. She was influenced by the English animal painter Sir Edwin Henry Landseer.
Bonheur was visiting slaughterhouses and performing dissections to study animal anatomy, preparing sketches and detailed studies for her paintings and sculptures. She received a French government commission which led to her first great success, the 'Horse Ploughing at the Nivernais'. Her most famous work was the monumental 'Horse Fair'. Same year she traveled to Scotland to exhibit her work to Queen Victoria, where she completed sketches for later works including 'A Scottish Raid', and 'Highland Shepherd'. She was especially popular in England much more than in her native France.
She was considered the most famous woman artist of her time. Today, she is perhaps famous because of wearing men's clothing. She is now seen as an early feminist. She said at the time that this was simply practical, as it facilitated her work with animals. She was controversial for the time. Through the Empress Eugenie, she received the Cross of the Legion of Honor. During the siege of Paris, her studio was spared.
She died at the age of 77. Many of her paintings, which had not been shown publicly, were sold at auction in Paris in 1900.
|
|
