Rosa Bonheur was a French painter,
born in 1822 in Bordeaux, who is considered the most famous woman animal
painter in history. Her most famous painting, The Horse Fair, displays the subject of the horse market held in Paris. The painting is
quite large and shows the wild, untamed horses and the men who are trying to
control them. Bonheur’s interest in painting animals goes back to her childhood
when her mother, teaching her to read, had her draw animals representing the
letters of the alphabet. Her mother
died when she was eleven and she was raised by her father, a
painter, involved with the Saint-Simonians who “advocated a form of socialism
which expressed a desire for the equality of women and men and abolishment of
class distinctions.” (www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/realism/Rosa-Bonheur.html) Because of her
father’s beliefs and desire for his daughter to have an education, Bonheur
began her education at an all-boys school, where she was considered “unruly”.
Later, because women were not allowed into the formal art schools, Bonheur
apprenticed with her father, who continued her artistic education by
encouraging her to copy paintings by masters at the Louvre and paint directly
from nature. Her siblings, as well, were known as animal painters, no doubt
because the influence of their father, his encouragement and the idea that he passed down
to them that “every living creature has a soul.” Bonheur herself possessed a deep love and respect for animals and continued to study, paint and
even surround herself with them later in life.
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| The Horse Fair, Rosa Bonheur, 1853-1855. The original hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. |
The subject of
The Horse Fair, a favorite
of Queen Victoria, appealed to British as well as French patrons who became
quite fond of domesticated animals as subjects for painting and decoration. It
also coincided with the public debate, which showed up regularly in newspapers
and discussions in intellectual circles, of animal rights and women’s rights to
a certain extent. Chadwick states that the debate was “important for what it
reveals about the way that control over the bodies of women and animals was
articulated around identifications with nature and culture, sexuality and
dominance.” (Whitney Chadwick,
Women, Art & Society, p. 195). The issue became “the power, or rather the powerlessness,
that middle-class women and working-class men and women experienced in the face
of the institutionalized authority of middle- and upper-class men.” (Chadwick:
195) The Woman Question, as the debate came to be known, included such issues
as reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, property rights, legal rights, medical
rights, women’s suffrage and marriage, and clearly shows up in Bonheur’s
paintings. It was considered inappropriate for women to paint scenes such as
Bonheur painted. Marie-Élisabeth Boulanger Cavé writes in
Drawing from Memory (1868), “Woman
must confine herself to those subjects which are allied to her sphere…
children, animals, fruit, flowers, etc. But when a woman desires to paint
large-sized pictures, she is...lost.” (
http://www.nmwa.org/collection/19th_century.asp)
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| Plowing in the Nivernais, Rosa Bonheur, 1850 |
Rosa Bonheur was an incredibly talented painter, however, it was
her manner of dress and behavior that has drawn the most attention to her ideology.
Her wild horses claim a fierce independence and claim to life which Bonheur
herself clearly possessed. She wrote, “To [my father’s] doctrines I owe my
great and glorious ambition for the sex to which I proudly belong and whose
independence I shall defend until my dying day.” Indeed, it is highly unlikely that she would have become the prolific painter
she did without his support. Bonheur has been defined as having a defiant
personality, dressing like a man, cutting her hair short, smoking cigarettes
and cigars, which “placed her in a decisive position in early feminism.” (
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/realism/Rosa-Bonheur.html)
Art historian James Saslow is said to suggest “that Bonheur’s use of masculine
dress was part of an attempt to claim male prerogatives and create an
androgynous and proto-lesbian visual identity.” However, when
questioned about her manner of dress, she herself said, "I was forced to
recognize that the clothing of my sex was a constant bother. That is why I
decided to solicit the authorization to wear men's clothing from the prefect of
police. But the suit I wear is my work attire, and nothing else. The epithets
of imbeciles have never bothered me...."
Other links:
The Art History Archive
National Museum of Wildlife Art
National Museum of Women in the Arts
