Rosa Bonheur

     Rosa Bonheur was born on March 16, 1822.  Her parents were followers of a movement that favored the education of girls alongside boys.  Her father was a painter and her mother was a piano teacher.  Rosa was taught to paint by her father and by the age of 14 she was making copies of paintings in the Louvre - a traditional way of study for artists over the centuries.  Before setting out on her own path as a painter and sculptor she copied the works of well known artists including Nicolas Poussin and Peter Paul  Rubens.

     Today she is regarded as an 'animaliere', an artist whose primary vision is the presentation of animal forms in painting and in sculpture.  Critics of her work complain that she did nothing to expand the boundaries of art and essayists seem more interested in her non-comformist clothing than in her paintings.

    I see in her work a traditional understanding of the shared landscape of animals and humans; she represented animals as she saw them in in the surrounding countryside.  Her work is skillfully executed and shows an understanding of the animals themselves.  Her representation of beauty lives on in the twenty-first century.

                                             Pictured above is her painting "Noonday Rest."

     Rosa Bonheur was the first woman decorated Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.