Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur was a French painter, sculptor and animalier, an artist whose subject was animals. She was born in Bordeaux on 16 March 1822 and died in Thomery on 25 May 1899.

She was widely regarded as the best-known woman painter of the nineteenth century. Her work is associated with Naturalism and with French Realism, and her sculptures are in a realist style. She also worked as a draftswoman.

Among her paintings, Ploughing in the Nivernais was first exhibited at the Salon of 1849 and is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The Horse Fair, exhibited at the Salon of 1853, now belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her other notable works include Gray Horse in Green and Ten Studies of a Ram.

Her paintings and sculptures are held by many museums. Among them are the Musée d’Orsay, the Condé Museum, the Museo del Prado, the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The painting shown here, Cattle at Rest on a Hillside in the Alps, is in the Art Institute of Chicago. It is oil on canvas, dated 1885, and measures 54.9 by 66.4 centimeters. As the title says, it shows cattle resting on a hillside in the Alps, in a landscape of hills and mountains under a sky with clouds. It is part of the A. A. Munger Collection and belongs to the museum’s Painting and Sculpture of Europe department.