Rosa BONHEUR — the “New Woman” of the 19th century
Disclaimer: The information provided in this episode comes from multiple sources and is not my scientific studies or discoveries. Check the references for more details. Thank you!
Welcome to HerArt podcast, a project for art lovers, especially art created by women. In this episode, we will talk about Rosa Bonheur — the “New Woman” of the 19th century. My name is Nata Andreev and I am going to tell you seven curious facts that you didn’t know about the artist that defined herself outside of the social and legal codes of her time, in a century that did its best to keep women “in their place.” To the horror of many, she earned her own money, managed her own property, wore trousers, hunted, and smoked.
Curious Fact #1
Her father was Oscar-Raymond Bonheur, a landscape and portrait painter. The Bonheur family adhered to Saint-Simonianism, a Christian-socialist sect that promoted the education of women alongside men. Bonheur’s siblings included the animal painters Auguste Bonheur and Juliette Bonheur and the animal sculptor Isidore Jules Bonheur. Francis Galton, an English Victorian era statistician, used the Bonheurs as an example of “Hereditary Genius” in his 1869 essay of the same title.
Curious Fact #2
Bonheur received honors, including the “Légion d’honneur” (from last Empress Consort of the French — Empress Eugénie, in 1865), previously only held by men. After this Rosa retreated from the limelight. She bought an estate near the Forest of Fontainebleau, that later became a menagerie of animals, and settled there with her life-long companion, Nathalie Micas, whom she had met at 14 and lived with until Nathalie’s death. After that Rosa will share her life with an American painter Anna Klumpke.
Curious Fact #3
By family accounts, Rosa had been an unruly child and had a difficult time learning to read, though even before she could talk she would sketch for hours at a time with pencil and paper. Her mother taught her to read and write by asking her to choose and draw a different animal for each letter of the alphabet. The artist credits her love of drawing animals to these reading lessons with her mother.
Curious Fact #4
Rosa’s fascination with and meticulous rendering of animals fit in perfectly with Realism and popular trends in nature studies. She was a hit with the public and exhibited yearly at the Salon beginning in 1841. Her sales were brisk due partly to the fact that everyone had heard of her: she earned a living as an artist, won awards, smoked in public, wore overalls (she needed a special license to do so) and visited slaughterhouses to study animal anatomy. In short, she was a notorious woman.
Curious Fact #5
Rosa’s most famous work, the monumental Horse Fair, measured two and a half meters high by approximately five meters wide and was completed in 1855. It depicts the horse market held in Paris. This work led to international fame and recognition; that same year she traveled to Scotland and met Queen Victoria en route, who admired Bonheur’s work. Rosa began work on The Horse Fair in 1852. For a year and a half, she made sketches twice a week at the horse market in Paris, on the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, dressing as a man in order to attract less attention from the horse dealers and buyers. The picture shows with accuracy the trees lining the boulevard and the cupola of the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière nearby.
Curious Fact #6
Today Rosa is also revered for being an outspoken feminist, and gaining female visual artists more equal status. Her nonconformity was outrageous for 19th-century Paris but, because she was so successful and independently wealthy, she forced many to reconsider the “role” of women artists.
Curious fact #7
Women were often only reluctantly educated as artists in Bonheur’s day, and by becoming such a successful artist she helped to open doors to women artists that followed her. That’s why Rosa earned her title as a “New Woman” of the 19th century.
Thank you so much for listening to the first episode of HerArt podcast — a project for art lovers, especially art created by women. If you want to follow more of what we do, follow us on Facebook and Instagram. And don’t forget to tune in next month, when I am going to tell you about Käthe KOLLWITZ — a true icon of pacifism and class struggle.
See you!
References
Wikipedia | The San Francisco Call | Art & Design Inspiration
