125. Rosa Bonheur

Bordeaux 1822 – 1899 Thomery, Seine-et-Marne

Misty Landscape

One of only two female artists included in this exhibition, the animal painter Rosa Bonheur achieved such celebrity during her lifetime that by the 1860s a doll had been made in her image, styled with cropped hair and the trousers which she could only wear thanks to a cross-dressing permit from the police (permission de travestissement). Excluded from formal art studies, she first trained with her father, a landscape painter whose Saint-Simonian beliefs in the equality of the sexes contributed to her education. She was nineteen when she first exhibited at the Paris Salon and was the first woman artist to be awarded the Légion d’Honneur. Though mostly known for her naturalistic depictions of animals, Bonheur also painted landscapes and regularly worked en plein air.1 This oil on paper, which was included in her 1900 estate sale, was likely painted near Fontainebleau, where the artist lived in the Château de By. Bonheur must have been taken by the effect of trees losing their contours in the mist, probably on a day in spring as indicated by the grass rendered in touches of light green. The brown and black of the foreground suggest she painted standing in the mud.