Her Early Life

Bonheur was a French painter of animals and sculptor known for accuracy and attention to graphic details of her paintings featuring animals. Rosa Bonheur was born in Bordeaux, France, in a family having four highly talented siblings. She was the eldest of the four of them, two boys and two girls.

The family moved from rural Bordeaux to Paris in 1829 when Rosa was only six years old. Rosa was enjoying sketching since her childhood days. Rosa enjoyed sketching as soon as she could hold a pencil, but struggled with reading and writing.

Death of Her Ingenious Mother

Noticing her natural inclination toward sketching and painting, her mother, who was a music teacher herself, was employing highly ingenious methods of teaching to bring out the best in her daughter and nurture her potential talent. Rosa’s intelligent mother asked her to draw an animal for each letter of the alphabet. From the age of 13, Rosa devoted herself alone to painting and drawing. When Bonheur was only ten, a cholera epidemic swept through France. Though the family did its best to remain indoors, Rosa’s mother Sophie fell ill and died at the age of 36. After her mother’s death, her father sent her to a boarding school. The boarding school refused to allow Rosa’s prolonged stay there as she was harboring a ‘tomboy manners’. This was as per Rosa’s own admission.

Passion for Animal Art

From 1839 onwards, Rosa devoted herself to the study of animals and this subject of her painting became her specialty. She exhibited at the Paris Salon. In 1848 Rosa received a gold medal for her painting ‘Oxen and animals, breed of Cantal’. She was resolutely non-conformist. In 1852, she obtained authorization from the police headquarters to wear trousers to go to the slaughterhouses.

She is the first artist in the history of painting who saw the art market speculate on her works. One famous art critic said of her ‘she makes art seriously and we can treat her like a man. Until 1897, women were not admitted to the School of Fine Arts. She also went to Louvre to copy the masters.

Father’s Whole-hearted Support

Probably realizing that Bordeaux was too small a place to offer scope for developing the artistic and sculptural potentialities of their children, the family moved to Paris and she was admitted to a boarding school. But her carefree and, as she herself is reported to have confessed, tomboy manners in schools made her face the disgrace of refusal for admission into a boarding school. However, realizing the full extent of her potential, her father encouraged her to take up painting landscapes, animals, and birds as her full-time profession. He took her to those places in and around Paris that are close to fields and animal habitats so that she could develop her talent for realistic drawing and painting.

‘The Horse Fair’

Rosa Bonheur made this painting ‘The Horse Fair’ in 1852. She first exhibited this painting at the Paris Salon in 1853. She added some finishing touches to the painting in 1855. The painting is a depiction of a fair where horses are bought and sold. These are also events that women were generally not permitted to attend at that period of time. The painting shows the horse market held in Paris on the tree-lined Boulevard de I’Hospital near the asylum of Salpetriere, which is visible in the painting.

Foray into Male-dominated Subjects

Her obsessional attachment to painting did not deter her from visiting primarily male-dominated places like horse fairs and slaughterhouses where the presence of female folks was rare. Her visits to these uncommon places were thought of as sources for gaining a deeper understanding of animal emotion and behavior. ‘A Limier Briquet Hound’ is one of Bonheur’s numerous animal portraits depicting hunting dogs and pets.

A Limier Briquet Hound, ca. 1856, Rosa Bonheur, French – Stretched Canvas

Increase in Her Popularity

After her initial debut with two paintings at the Paris Salon in 1841, she exhibited her paintings every year. By the year 1843, Bonheur was selling her paintings regularly. She exhibited her paintings in Salon every year until 1855. In this way, not only her popularity increase but she also earned more money. With the inflow of sufficient income, she could travel to other destinations for studying as well as painting more and more animals.

Her Well-known Paintings

Bonheur tasted commercial success in painting at a time when very few women had made any mark in this field. She always believed that it was her parents, especially her father, whose firm belief in her artistic talent prodded her to treat painting as a profession. He provides her with all the necessary training in that field. ‘Plowing in the Nivernais’, Horse Fair’, Spanish Muleteers Crossing the Pyrenees’, ‘Sheep by the Sea’, ‘Weaning the Calves’, ‘The Lion at Home’, ‘Portrait of William F. Cody’s, ‘Our English Coasts (Strayed Sheep), ‘The Pyrenees’, ‘Highland Raid‘, are some of her famous paintings depicting animals.

Her Famous Painting, ‘A Limier Briquet Hound’

In her painting, ‘A Limier Briquet Hound‘, Bonheur depicted a real-life specimen of a dog owned by a person known to her. Her ability to pay undivided attention to painting the different parts of the animal’s physical structure with utmost care has made the portrait famous. The sinewy muscular legs, its thoroughbred body, its focussed eyes, and the alertness in its gait have been painted so painstakingly that it gives an impression as though the animal is sizing up its prey before pouncing on it.

Her Famous Painting ‘Nivernais Plowing’

This famous painting depicts cattle plowing the farmland. Plowing consists of the first stage of the farming activities. Peasants use this method to open the ground in order to aerate it during the winter. In this animal painting, oxen painted in different colors are the subjects and the main characters. The farmers or the herdsmen doing the plowing activities are depicted so small and faceless that they appear quite insignificant in this painting. It is also an attempt to recognize the agricultural traditions and the landscape of the province, the Nivernais.