Bonheur
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ROSALIE (bon-êr'), commonly called ROSA, a French artist, born in Bordeaux, March 22, 1822. Her studies were directed by her father, himself an artist of ability, and her first two pictures, "Chèvres et Moutons," and "Les Deux Lapins," which were exhibited in ROSA BONHEUR 1841, attracted much attention. In 1849 a fine work, "Labourages Nivernais," by her, was purchased by the French Government for 3,000 francs and placed in the Luxembourg collection. In 1855 "The Haymaking Season in Auvergne" was hung at the Universal Exposition in Paris, and in the same year she sent the "Horse Fair" to the French Exhibition in London, where it was the center of attraction for the season. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. After this work she stood at the very head of delineators of animal life, showing a wonderful power of representing spirited action. She attended horse markets and fairs; generally wearing masculine dress, to study animals. After 1849 she directed the Free School of Design for Young Girls in Paris. During the siege of Paris the Crown Prince of Prussia especially especially ordered that her studio and residence at Fontainebleau should be spared and respected. She received a first class medal at the French Salon in 1849, and another in 1855; and the decoration of the Legion of Honor in 1865; she was made a member of the Institute of Antwerp in 1868; received the Leopold cross from the King of Belgium in 1880, and from the King of Spain the Commander's Cross of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic. In 1892 a celebrated painting by her, entitled "Horses Threshing Corn," was sold for $60,000. It is the largest animal picture ever painted, showing ten horses large as life. In 1896, on her 74th birthday, she furnished a painting representing the historical combat between two stallions to which Lord Godolphin invited his friends in 1734. She died at Fontainebleau, May 25, 1899. BONHOMME RICHARD (bôn-umre-shär'), a famous American warship that, under the command of John Paul Jones, engaged in a terrific battle with the British ship "Serapis" in British waters, off Flamborough Head, on Sept. 23, 1799. Jones lashed the vessels together and compelled the "Serapis" to strike her colors. The "Bonhomme Richard" sank two days afterward.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The facts Collier's set down in 1921 still hold: "The Horse Fair" remains in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and Bonheur died at Fontainebleau in 1899. What has changed is her standing. Through much of the twentieth century her huge animal pieces fell out of critical favour as taste turned to the Impressionists who followed her, and only in recent decades has she been reclaimed — as the most commercially successful woman painter of her century, and as a woman who lived openly with female companions, first Nathalie Micas and then the American painter Anna Klumpke, who inherited her estate. The "masculine dress" Collier's mentions in passing is now read as central rather than eccentric: she held a formal police permit to wear trousers, and her cross-dressing is a staple of modern writing on her. Her house and studio at By, near Thomery, has been restored and opened to visitors, and her bicentenary in 2022 brought major retrospectives in France.
Written for this edition, 2026.