Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur was a French artist and the most celebrated woman painter of the nineteenth century. Born in 1822 into an artistic and progressive family, she specialized in animals, painting horses, cattle, and other creatures with a truth and power rarely seen before. Her huge canvas The Horse Fair, full of surging, muscular horses, made her internationally famous.

To study animal anatomy she visited farms, fairs, and slaughterhouses, and she obtained official permission to wear trousers so she could work more freely in such places. She lived openly on her own terms with female companions and enjoyed rare independence and success for a woman of her time. Bonheur's skill and determination made her a pioneering figure as well as a superb painter of the animal world.