Women's History Month: Rosa Bonheur

Having previously featured French artist Rosa Bonheur in my Importance of Portraits series, I felt it was high time to bring up the importance of her art in the history of women artists. She was a rebel at a time when women were still expected to only be “rulers of the household.” And besides that, she was a leading Realist painter at a time when people had tired of the grandiose, over-dramatic, and out-of-touch Neoclassicism and Romanticism movements in French art. Although Bonheur was an animalière (woman who painted animal subjects) renowned for her scientifically accurate depictions of animals, she was also a great landscape painter. 

Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899, France), Ploughing in the Nivernais Region, 1849. Oil on canvas, 52 ¾" x 102 ⅜" (134 x 260 cm). Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Image © 2025 Dr Ron Wiedenhoeft / Saskia Ltd. (NFF-0954)

Like many of Bonheur's farm subjects, the Charolais oxen in Ploughing in the Nivernais Region are the main feature of this painting. The farmers are treated as little but incidental elements. The scene represents the dressing of a farm field, which is done in autumn. The plunging diagonal in perspective creates an almost iconic, monumental view of the oxen, which Bonheur admired so much for their strength and hard work. While the narrative is incidental, it focuses more on the hard work the oxen perform than any heroic actions by the farmers. At the same time, this is a glorification of country life, which was seen as an idyllic contrast and alternative to the corruption of city life after the Revolution of 1848.

Rosa Bonheur, The Horse Fair, ca. 1852–1855. Oil on canvas, 8' x 16' 6" (244.5 x 506.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1887. Public domain. (8S-30339)

The Horse Fair, exhibited in the Salon of 1853, was Bonheur’s biggest triumph. It was the most talked-about work of that year and was later exhibited in England from 1855 to 1857. She painted several versions of The Horse Fair, most of which were half the size of the original. The Horse Fair chronicles the horse market in Paris, which Bonheur sketched for a year and a half. 

While the straining animals of The Horse Fair may bring to mind the manic beasts in the paintings of the Romantics Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) and Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), these animals lack the violence of such works. Those compositions were based in the theatrical animal scenes of the Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1641). Bonheur’s horses are more of a scientific study in movement and musculature, as seen in the “conversation piece” depictions of prized British horses in the work of artists such as George Stubbs (1724–1806). They also lack the narrative melodrama of exotic “Arab” subjects of Romanticism. The poses are directly influenced from the Panathenaic procession frieze from the Parthenon, which also depicts a row of horses with anatomical accuracy.

Rosa Bonheur, The Farm at the Entrance to the Woods, 1860–1880. Oil on fabric, 11 3⁄16" x 15 ⅞" (28.4 x 40.3 cm). The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain. (8S-30091)

For all of her paintings, including landscapes, Bonheur did numerous studies. She had a natural preference for rural, rustic farms, where she often carefully studied animals. The Farm at the Entrance to the Woods could be one of the farms near the Fontainebleau Forest, where she lived for forty years. The painting may have been started outdoors, where Bonheur established the lights and darks in the traditional underpainting in a green-yellow-brown palette. It would have then been finished in her studio. Interestingly, there are violet tonalities in the deep shadows that could reflect a color aesthetic similar to that of the Impressionists.

Bonheur was initially trained by her father, Raymond Bonheur (1796–1849), a realist landscape painter and drawing instructor. Her younger brother, Auguste Bonheur (1824–1884), was also a Realist painter of animals and landscapes, while her other younger brother, Isidore Bonheur (1827–1901), was a renowned Realist sculptor of animals. In her teens, Bonheur furthered her painting skills by going to the Louvre routinely and painting copies of great renowned works of the Baroque and Renaissance periods. She was particularly interested in the realism of Dutch Baroque painters. Her eye for detail and meticulous realism were already apparent, and she was able to supplement the family income by selling these faithful copies. 

At seventeen, Bonheur became interested in painting scenes of animals. Horse fairs, cattle markets, and domesticated pets were her study material. She also visited slaughterhouses to learn the underlying anatomy of the animals she painted. From her teen years on, Bonheur spurned society’s conventions in many ways, including the preference to wear pants—for which she had to get written permission from the police—and short hair. Starting in 1841, she showed paintings every year at the annual Salon sponsored by the French Academy in Paris.

After Bonheur's resounding success at the Salon of 1853 with The Horse Fair, her reputation soared internationally. Her works were bought by patrons throughout Europe and in the United States. In 1865, she was the first woman in France to be honored with the Cross of the Legion of Honor, a noble order founded by Napoleon I (1769–1821). 

Correlations to Davis programs: Discovering Art History 4E: Chapter 12.3; Davis Collections: Women Artists pre-1900s