Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899) was a pioneering French painter and sculptor celebrated for her masterful depictions of animals and rural life. Born in the Bordeaux region of Gironde, she was the oldest child of a family of artists. Her father, Raimond Bonheur, was a landscape and portrait painter, while her mother, who died when Rosa was only eleven, was a piano instructor. One of her brothers was the animal sculptor Isidore Jules Bonheur.

Rosa was reputedly disruptive in school, so her mother taught her to read and write at home by having her draw an animal for each letter of the alphabet. In 1828, the family moved to Paris, where her father eventually agreed to teach her painting after she had been expelled from several schools for behavioral issues. She began by copying images from drawing books and plaster models, then progressed to studies of live animals—horses, sheep, cows, goats, rabbits—found in the pastures around Paris and the Bois de Boulogne. At fourteen, she copied works of the masters at the Louvre, particularly Nicholas Poussin and Peter Paul Rubens.

To deepen her understanding of animals, Rosa studied anatomy and osteology at the National Veterinary Institute in Paris and even visited slaughterhouses to observe bone structures firsthand. She favored trousers and a waistcoat, and received permission from the Prefect of Police to dress in men’s attire for practicality while working.

Her career brought international acclaim, most notably for The Horse Fair (1853–1855), and she was represented by private galleries, with Ernest Gambart acquiring reproduction rights and selling engraved copies of her works. Rosa Bonheur died in 1899 at Thomery, France. Many previously unseen works were auctioned in Paris in 1900, cementing her legacy as one of the most celebrated animal painters in history.