Rosa Bonheur, the Animalière
Revisiting a technically brilliant realist who endeavoured to reveal the souls of her subjects and celebrate our connection with the land…
Rosa Bonheur was among the most famous women painters of the nineteenth-century but is little known today, mainly because she painted for private collectors and all but vanished from public view after her death in 1899. She was renowned for her paintings of animals, produced with both vigour and meticulous realism. Her goal was to convey the unique personality and soul of each animal.
She was born in 1822 and her father, Raymond believed in the Saint Simonian philosophy — a utopian socialist view which included avant-garde ideas that included gender equality and the conviction that animals have souls. Her mother, Sophie was a music teacher who encouraged the young Rosa in her reading and writing by asking her to draw an animal alphabet, which helped Rosa through her difficulties with reading and writing. From then on Rosa’s passion for animals, keeping pets and drawing them, grew.
Rosa’s mother died from cholera when she was young, and this reinforced her self-reliance and independence. Her father educated her in his studio and encouraged her talent to draw and paint from nature. In fact, he established a drawing…
