Rosa bonheur biography horse fair photos

She also made sculptures in a realist style. Bonheur was widely considered to be the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century. It has been claimed that Bonheur was openly lesbian , as she lived with her partner Nathalie Micas for over 40 years until Micas's death, after which she lived with American painter Anna Elizabeth Klumpke.

Bonheur was born on 16 March in Bordeaux , Gironde , the oldest child in a family of artists.

The horse fair rosa bonheur

Her father was Oscar-Raymond Bonheur , a landscape and portrait painter who encouraged his daughter's artistic talents. Bonheur's siblings included the animal painters Auguste Bonheur and Juliette Bonheur , as well as the animal sculptor Isidore Jules Bonheur. Francis Galton used the Bonheurs as an example of the eponymous "Hereditary Genius" in his essay.

Bonheur moved to Paris in at the age of six with her mother and siblings, after her father had gone ahead of them to establish a residence and income there. By family accounts, she had been an unruly child and had a difficult time learning to read, though she would sketch for hours at a time with pencil and paper before she learned to talk.

At school she was often disruptive, and was expelled numerous times. Her father allowed her to pursue her interest in painting animals by bringing live animals to the family's studio for studying. Following the traditional art school curriculum of the period, Bonheur began her training by copying images from drawing books and by sketching plaster models.