Rosa Bonheur was a French animal painter who defied the artistic and gendered conventions of her time. Although her work was hardly experimental, her personality and commitment made her unique and accomplished. She was the wealthiest artist of her time but was almost forgotten a century later. Today, a number of art experts and historians aim to reevaluate the art of Rosa Bonheur and bring her back to fame.
1. Rosa Bonheur Had a Remarkable Family
The phenomenal success of Rosa Bonheur would have been impossible in her time without the string of favorable, albeit sometimes traumatic, circumstances of her family life and origins. Her father was a landscape painter who was hardly present during the earliest years of her life, as he was too engaged in his political and professional pursuits. Born in 1822, Rosa Bonheur was the oldest of four siblings and gave enough trouble to her mother, who was a quiet and collected piano teacher. Rosa had little inclinations towards education, preferring to play outside and draw. To teach her reading and writing, Rosa’s mother had to find a suitable compromise: she offered her daughter the opportunity to draw pictures of animals corresponding to each letter she learned. Attempts at formal education proved rather futile after Bonheur was expelled from several schools for her disruptive behavior and boyish attitude.
Rosa lost her mother to a cholera epidemic at the age of just ten. Consequently, her father stepped back into the picture. He was the follower of Saint-Simonianist philosophy, a socialist doctrine that, apart from specific views on industrialism and workers’ rights, advocated for equal education and equal rights for women. Recognizing his daughter’s talent, Rosa’s father arranged for her to attend drawing classes in an all-boys art school, and he also started to teach her himself. By the age of 13, Rosa already helped her father in his artistic studio. He arranged a study course at the Louvre, where she trained by copying paintings and sculptures made by famous masters. Seeing her excitement about animal painting, the father even leased an entire apartment only to keep a small menagerie of animals like rabbits and canaries.
2. She Received an Official Permit to Wear Pants in Public
Above all, Rosa Bonheur was interested in painting animals—all kinds of animals, not limited to chickens and kittens, which were easily available to her in domestic settings. She wanted to study cows, oxen, and horses closely and in detail, but she could hardly do it in her current social status. Although her family lived near farms, working in the mud in crinolines and petticoats would be unendurable. The most exciting places for her were horse markets, which openly discouraged the presence of women. The mere sight of an unaccompanied lady could cause scandal and harassment, making such visits unsafe for Bonheur. To ensure her safety and follow her professional interests, she resorted to seeking help from the state.
In 1800, the Paris prefecture officially adopted a decree prohibiting women from wearing men’s attire. This measure was implemented as a reaction to the growing women’s rights movements and several theoretical writings condemning lesbianism. Exceptions from the no-pants rule could be made either due to medical conditions or a professional necessity. The permit lasted for a period of three to six months and needed to be reviewed and reissued. Still, even the presence of a permit did not allow women to attend concerts and many other public social events. Bonheur received her permit as an artist working in horse fairs and slaughterhouses to avoid unwanted attention and hygienic troubles. Absurdly, the decree promising fines and jail time for women who refused to abide was overturned only in 2013, although, obviously, it was not enforced for decades.
3. Her Most Famous Work Catapulted Her to Fame
Quite soon, Bonheur started to attract attention not only for her original way of dressing but for her art as well. At the age of only 19, she exhibited two of her small works at the Paris Salon. For many artists, such an honor was the pinnacle of their career, but for Rosa Bonheur, this was only the beginning. Her great rise to fame happened in 1855 when she presented the monumental painting The Horse Fair. For two years, she attended the Paris horse market several times a week, studying and sketching the movement of horses and humans, their characters, and temperaments.
Initially, she was discouraged from painting such a subject, deemed too ambitious and intense for a woman painter. Still, upon the work’s reveal, the critics highlighted the masculine qualities of the work and the dramatism similar to the works by Theodore Gericault.
The painting immediately made Bonheur an international celebrity. Initially, Bonheur approached the French state, offering to officially commission the work, but the officials were not interested. After the artist presented her finished work, the officials’ opinions changed, but Bonheur refused to accept their apologies and payment. Instead, she went on a European tour with a collection of her works, exhibiting in Belgium and Britain. The work made Bonheur not only incredibly famous but also extraordinarily wealthy since the exhibits were followed by a string of commissions and studio visits.
4. She Kept a Menagerie of Exotic Animals
What started from a small menagerie of birds in Bonheur’s teenage years grew into a full-blown private zoo. Just four years after The Horse Fair made her famous, the artist became too tired from the constant social buzz and expectations. So, Bonheur bought a chateau outside Paris, where she would spend the following forty years of her life completely immersed in her work. There, she arranged a menagerie of animals, some of them too exotic for the French land. She had oxen and mouflons, deers and gazelles, and even a couple of lions, with the lioness walking freely on the property.
Bonheur’s partner, Nathalie Micas, helped with the animals’ upkeep. The two women met as teenagers and lived almost half a century together. Micas also became a painter, although a less successful one. Apart from her own work, she helped Bonheur rework and prepare her paintings for printed reproduction. Many rumors have surrounded the couple’s relationship, yet most contemporaries noted the tender, matrimonial attitude of women towards each other and a gendered separation of domestic duties, with Bonheur being the provider and Micas the housekeeper.
5. Dolls Were Made After Her Image
Bonheur’s immediate rise to fame had an unusual and unexpected side effect. She was not only a famous painter but a celebrity who became so popular she even had her own merchandise. In the 1870s, German porcelain manufacturers produced a Rosa Bonheur doll—a figure of the artist with her signature haircut wearing gentleman’s clothing and carrying a walking stick. Dolls have actually played an important role in the development of Bonheur’s creative aspirations. In her diaries, she remembered that, as a child in her father’s studio, she used to watch him as he painted portraits of live models. Carefully observing the scene, she sat next to his easel and arranged her dolls in the same position as the people in front of her.
The Rosa Bonheur doll was immensely popular even outside Germany. For instance, the American painter Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, 34 years younger than Bonheur, owned one of these dolls in her childhood, gradually growing her fascination with the daring artist. As a teenager, he studied and copied Bonheur’s works and finally met her when both artists were 39 and 73 years old, respectively. Klumpke offered to paint Bonheur’s portrait, and that meeting transformed into a relationship that ended with Bonheur’s death just four years later. Klumpke dedicated the following forty years of her life to documenting the life of Bonheur, preserving her archives and artworks.
6. Gender Trouble: Rosa Bonheur’s Ambiguous Gender Presentation
Contrary to widespread belief, the understanding of gender and the general concept of it are not fixed and vary depending on time, place, and social conditions. Thus, a conversation about Rosa Bonheur’s gender identity sometimes gets complex as we try to apply 21st-century notions to the life and mindset of a 19th-century person. Some present-day historians suggest that Bonheur could be categorized as a transgender man in contemporary terms. However, her personal account repeatedly confirms that, despite the preference for male attire, traditionally male-prescribed activities, and the strict gender-coded division of household labor at her and Micas’ household, the artist boldly identified as a woman. Moreover, she insisted that her accomplishments were proof of women’s capability to create great art.
However, Bonheur’s gender identity and sexuality remain subjects of debate. Even though plenty of information suggests a romantic relationship between Bonheur and both her companions, the current owner of Rosa Bonheur’s chateau, Katherine Brault, prefers to avoid this question. For an unclear reason, she refers to the presence of both women in Bonheur’s life as acts of extraordinary sisterhood.
