ROSA BONHEUR PAINTINGS FOR SALE & BIOGRAPHY

ROSA BONHEUR

French, 1822-1899

BIOGRAPHY
Rosa Bonheur "was born in Bordeaux. Her father, Raymond Bonheur, a landscape painter, taught drawing and gave his daughter her earliest lessons. The family moved to Paris in 1828, where Rosa copied a great deal in the Louvre and made studies from nature in the Bois de Boulogne, at that time still a forest. Her extremely independent personality emerged very early. After studying under Cogniet, she began in 1841 to exhibit paintings and occasionally sculptures of animals at the Salon. Later she attracted the attention of critics and public with landscapes and peasant scenes rendered in the spirit of Millet.

"The Horse Fair, painted when Rosa Bonheur was thirty-one, was shown at the Salon of 1853, and from that time on it was regarded as her masterpiece and won for her world-wide fame. She was considered one of the greatest specialists in animal painting, which was then very popular in England and America. Visiting England and Scotland, and honored by Queen Victoria, she became celebrated and wealthy, enjoying an official success rarely achieved by a woman. In her native France she was visited in her studio by Napoleon III and by Empress Eugénie, who personally gave her the cross of the Legion of Honor; the French Republic showered other honors on her, and the President himself called upon her, insisting that she receive him in her working clothes, customarily male attire.

"Rosa Bonheur established herself in a country house at By, near Fontainebleau, in 1859, and she worked there for forty years. She was always enthusiastic about painting animals from life, and built enormous studios into which herds could be driven, and for several years she kept a lioness as a pet. Occasionally she turned to American subjects, painting a picture called Indian Braves and a portrait of Buffalo Bill. Although Rosa Bonheur's paintings of animals have often, like those of Troyon, been considered strongly realistic, she was deeply imbued with the romantic spirit, especially in the early part of her career... She steeped herself in the humanitarian writings of Félicité de Lamennais and George Sand and dreamed of mankind's attainment of an idyllic harmony with nature and the animal kingdom.

"Rosa Bonheur's style was always characterized by her pronounced liking for movement and a lyrical, dramatic use of shafts of light. The influence of Géricault is evident in The Horse Fair, and there is also an eloquent breadth of form embodying an aesthetic vision like Daumier's. Although the dash and grandeur of The Horse Fair were not achieved in many of Rosa Bonheur's works, her best paintings show a strong simplification and a real response to nature. Her work is original and fine and not to be confused with ordinary academic art. Her composition, like her brush stroke, is often broad, her observation direct and fresh; and a delicate light pervades many of her landscapes... Rosa Bonheur has, nevertheless, remained one of the best nineteenth-century French animal painters, ranking immediately after Delacroix and Gericault.”

[Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger, ed., French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum, XIX Century, New York, 1966, vol. II, pp. 160-161]

Museum Collections:
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, Aberdeen
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog, New York
Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Blackburn
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Brighton
British Museum, London
English Heritage, Brodsworth Hall, Doncaster
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
Musée Condé, Château de Chantilly
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Dahesh Museum, New York
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull
Musée National du Château de Fontainebleau
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA
Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble
Haggin Museum, Stockton, CA
The Hepworth, Wakefield
Musée de Langres, Langres
Musée de Lille, Lille
National Museums, Liverpool
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
Musée National du Château, Fontainebleau
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Musée du Luxembourg, Paris
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Musée Rosa Bonheur, Château de By, Thomery
National Gallery, London
Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada, Ottawa
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Princeton Art Museum, Princeton, NJ
Reading Public Museum, Reading, PA
Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen
Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust, Brighton and Hove
Museums Sheffield
Sudley House, Liverpool
Wallace Collection, London
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC

Mark Murray Fine Paintings is a New York gallery specializing in buying and selling 19th century and early 20th century artwork.