Rosa Bonheur, animal painter who has become a feminist and lesbian icon

Clio Bayle, edited by Alexis Patri 09:00, March 20, 2022

We are in the winter of 1852, in the 13th arrondissement of Paris.

The day is barely breaking, but on Boulevard de l'Hôpital, where the capital's horse market has been located for three centuries, the excitement of the day has already begun.

It is at this early hour that the animals that will be sold here in the afternoon arrive from all over Île-de-France.

Besides the usual crowd of horse dealers, the notorious horse dealers, plus a few vets and grooms, someone else got up early that morning.

An intruder.

A singular character.

He's been hanging around for weeks.

Over time, the others got used to it.

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Of small stature, the individual is dressed in an ample and thick blue blouse.

As if not to be recognized, he wears a hat which he pulls down to his ears.

Under his hat, we still guess short and curly hair, lively eyes and an expressive mouth.

Twice a week, rain or shine, the little figure is there.

She sets up her easel facing the central rail, observes the riders trotting or galloping, and tirelessly draws sketches.

A rare "cross-dressing permit" holder

"She", the small silhouette, is a woman!

It is true that it is hardly visible under his blouse and his hat!

Especially since the lady is wearing gaiters, boots and trousers.

Trousers for a lady, something perfectly unthinkable in mid-19th century Paris.

Unthinkable, and even formally prohibited by the law of 26 brumaire year IX, promulgated at the very beginning of the century.

There are very few exceptions to the rule.

A very small handful of Parisiennes (we count them on the fingers of one hand), benefit from a free pass.

The writer Georges Sand has one.

This is called a "cross-dressing permission".

Another artist got into the habit of obtaining this sesame at the time, "the George Sand of the brush", as a journalist would call her.

It's the famous little silhouette of the horse market!

She has been renewing her license every six months for several years now.

This allows him to practice his profession quietly, and to blend into the background.

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Because this mysterious lady is none other than the animal painter Rosalie Bonheur, Rosa, to make it shorter.

And her favorite subjects, she finds them in slaughterhouses and cattle fairs.

Almost exclusively male universes, where "skirts", as they say, are not welcome!

The subterfuge works well.

Rosa has plenty of time to spend hours observing her subjects.

Subjects that she renders on canvas with striking realism.

Almost too much for some!

Paul Cézanne will say of his paintings that they are "horribly similar"!

But this is not the opinion of all, fortunately!

And at the start of the 1850s, Rosa Bonheur, at just 30 years old, was already enjoying great success.

Calf, cow, pig... horse!

Six years earlier, she obtained her first distinction, a bronze medal, at the prestigious Salon de peinture et de sculpture.

Then yet another, this one in gold, at the 1848 salon for his painting

.

This success even earned him an order from the State for a pretty sum of 3,000 francs.

That's a hell of a lot for the time!

A privileged worker then earns between 3 and 4 francs a day.

Rosa is doing very well, she who knew poverty when she was a child, after her father abandoned his family to join the order of Saint-Simonians.

Yet it is in the footsteps of this painter father that she decided to walk.

At Les Bonheur, it seems, it cannot be otherwise: art is in the blood!

Her sister and her brother are animal painters, like her.

His other brother is a sculptor.

Rosa's specialty, what she made a name for in painting, are agrarian subjects: cows, oxen, bulls, sheep.

But she also has another favorite subject: horses.

Noble subject of animal painting, if any!

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She had already painted a few of them: 

, which she presented at the 1842 salon, 

 and 

, in 1843. But the canvases did not attract more attention. only that.

A woman painting an animal symbolizing masculinity was considered at the time a task for a man's "manly brush" not the delicacy of a lady's.

Rosa Bonheur has nothing to do with these prejudices.

She has had an ambition for several years now: to create a large fresco on horses, a very large format fresco that would make a lasting impression.

Relentlessly, she has therefore drawn and redrawn the bodies of these majestic animals a thousand times.

Their anatomy, she knows it by heart, having studied it in scientific textbooks.

And in this winter of 1852, she was ready to put her plan into action.

The horse market

So, for the past few weeks, she has been coming to do her sketches at the Paris horse market.

Determined to paint this picture that obsesses her… But how?

How much ?

What breeds?

Percherons, of course, but not only.

Norfolk trotters too, Boulonnais… How many riders?

And on what background?

Rosa does not have the answers to all her questions.

She does, she does again, without ever being completely satisfied.

It's a challenge she set herself.

The rendering must be equal to the greatest, equal to the sculptor Phidias and his Parthenon frieze, equal to the horses on the Napoleonic battlefields of Théodore Géricault.

In 1853, after two years of hard work, 

, that's its name, was finally presented to the public.

And the opinion of the experts is not long in coming.

The reception is dithyrambic!

Art critics, both French and foreign, are unanimous: 

 is a major work.

This is the beginning of glory for Rosa Bonheur.

And wealth.

His canvas was bought at a hefty price, 40,000 francs, by the art dealer Ernest Gambart.

A staggering sum for the time.

Exhibited in London in 1854, then at the Universal Exhibition in 1855, the work was a resounding success across the Channel, then across the Atlantic.

The farm of the castle of By

Now famous, in 1859 Rosa Bonheur offered herself a dream location.

She who hates lights, visits, or talking about her to journalists, needs a haven of peace.

It will be the castle of By, in Thomery, in Seine-et-Marne, where she has a large workshop built to work, and where above all, she surrounds herself with the only crowd she tolerates: a crowd of animals.

Not just dogs, no – which she adores by the way.

In its three-hectare park, you can come across a deer, a couple of izards (cousin of the chamois), a marmot, and a whole host of birds: pheasants, roosters, hens, guinea fowl, a scarlet macaw … She even has a tamed lioness who responds to the name of Fatma.

For Rosa Bonheur, animals have a soul, an individuality.

It is this deep conviction that makes her a special animal painter.

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Atypical, the one whose bicentenary of birth is being celebrated was so in more ways than one.

Because she did not conform to the standards of her time.

Because she dared to wear men's clothes.

Because she also lived far from the usual patterns, with women as partners who left a lasting mark on her life.

And in particular with Nathalie Micas, also a painter, whom she accompanied to her family's vault in the Père Lachaise cemetery.

Rosa Bonheur is remembered as a figure in homosexual and feminist causes.

More besides than for his painting.

At the time of her death, however, in 1899, Rosa Bonheur's notoriety was immense.

And

, famous all over the world.

His last canvas, which remained unfinished, still represents horses, this time fleeing a fire.

One last time, Rosa Bonheur will have tried to release horses at full gallop on the canvas.

But this time, in spite of herself, it is the brush that she will have been obliged to let go.

Bibliography:

• Rosa Bonheur & Anna Klumpke,

  Memories of my life

  , Phébus, 2022.

• Patricia Bouchenot-Déchin,

  I have the energy of a lioness in the body of a bird

  , Albin Michel, 2022

• Emile Cantrel,

  Mademoiselle Rosa Bonheur

  , in Revue L'Artiste Volume 8, 1859.