20. Rosa Bonheur — Lost Lady of Art
KIM: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode! I’m Kim Askew…
AMY: And I’m Amy Helmes. In today’s episode, we thought we’d mix it up and talk about a woman who was once an international superstar whose genius earned her a fortune, but whom almost nobody remembers today. Royalty, statesmen and celebrities all gushed over her — including Queen Victoria, Napoleon’s wife (Empress Eugenie), and Czar Nicholas II.
KIM: She’s not a lost lady of lit, but rather, she’s a lost lady of the art world, and today we’re mixing it up today because, after learning about the 19th-century French painter Rosa Bonheur we couldn’t resist the urge to tell you about her.
AMY: Yeah, her life and her career trajectory is totally WILD — and we mean that quite literally. This woman had a pet lioness who roamed around her house, you guys!
KIM: Okay, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. She was one fascinating personality. Her life story would make a great movie.
AMY: Yeah, totally. I came across an article about her in a recent issue of Smithsonian magazine. It was written by Elaine Sciolino (and we’ll link to in our show notes), but today we’re just going to give you some of the highlights. Bonheur was best known for painting animals. She did this in lifelike (almost photographic) detail, and she was also a genius at self-promotion and she lived her life in very gender-defying, I-am-who-I-am sort of glory, which was pretty unheard of for the day.
KIM: Bonheur grew up in poverty — her mother died and was buried in a pauper’s grave when she was only 11. Her father was a struggling artist, and Bonheur trained under him. She loved to paint animals because she believed they had souls just like humans did.
AMY: So, when she was 19 years-old, a painting she did of two rabbits nibbling on a carrot was exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon. Later, her giant canvas of two teams of oxen pulling plows — this was titled Plowing in the Nivernaisˆ— was dubbed a masterpiece by critics, and it’s still on permanent display in the Musee d’Orsay.)
KIM: Although she was tiny in stature, she liked to paint these really huge paintings — her most famous is called The Horse Fair. It’s 8 feet tall and 16-and-a-half feet long and it was once referred to by an American publication as “the world’s greatest animal picture.” It was sold at auction to Cornelius Vanderbilt and now you can find it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
AMY: So she got some serious cash for this painting, and with that money she was able to buy a grand chateau about 50 miles south of Paris bordering the royal forest of Fountainbleu. She specialized in painting animals, so it’s no wonder that her property wound up becoming a veritable zoo. She kept dozens of species of animals including, you know, sort of the run of the mill sheep and horses, but also monkeys, lions and tigers at various points in time. She also spent lots of time at animal auctions and slaughterhouses in order to study her subject matter in more detail. In addition, she was obsessed with the earliest iterations of photography and had built herself a dark room in the chateau as well.
KIM: All this work didn’t really jibe with wearing fancy dresses, naturally, so she wore pants. She was a tomboy growing up and continued that trend into adulthood.
AMY: She actually received a special “cross-dressing” permit from the Paris police, which she had to get renewed every six months (which I found totally fascinating). I think the article said she had a doctor write her a note basically saying that for health reasons and going to these slaughterhouses and places like that, she needed to dress like a man. So she was often mistaken for a man when she was out and about. She rode horses astride instead of side-saddle like ladies of the day. She kept her hair short, and she also ain smoked at a time when smoking for women was associated with prostitution.
KIM: She never married, and while we can’t really make assumptions about her personal life this many years after the fact, her closest relationship as an adult was with her childhood friend, a fellow painter named Nathalie Micas. They lived together, and Bonheur did once write, “Had I been a man, I would have married her.”
AMY: When Micas died, Bonheur went on to live with another woman — an American painter who was 34 years younger than she was — her name was Anna Klumpke. Bonheur called Klumpke “the daughter I never had,” but then in another letter she referred to her as her “wife.” Yet, at the same time, she’s also been quoted as saying, “I wed art. It is my husband.”
KIM: Right, and whether or not she was a lesbian, she does remind me a bit of English diarist Anne Lister, the women who inspired the HBO series “Gentleman Jack.”
AMY: Yes, I definitely agree. Although I read that she did wear dresses for public appearances and portraits. She wasn’t necessarily ostracized for who she was. People seemed to accept it. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal from Napoleon’s wife, who declared of Bonheur that, “genius has no sex.” She also received honors from Mexico’s Emperor Maximilian and Spain’s King Alfonso XII. Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra met her once at the Louvre, and she was visited by Queen Isabella of Spain. So, hanging out with tons of serious VIPs. She was befriended by Buffalo Bill Cody when he toured through France with his Wild West show. She was so popular in her day that a porcelain doll was made in her likeness, and a variety of rose was named after her. But today, she’s not a household name, even in the art world. I’d read a New York Times piece that said she sort of failed to have a lasting appeal in France because she was seen as having sold out, you know? A lot of her paintings wound up being bought by English and Americans, and she painted more in an English style. So it’s possible she was considered sort of a deserter, and no longer authentically French, even though she was still living in France.
KIM: Right. And after her death in 1899, this sort of hyper-realistic art she was known for began to really fall out of fashion and was replaced by Impressionism. What’s amazing, though, is that today, one French woman is spearheading the efforts to resurrect her legacy and turn Bonheur’s Chateau into a museum dedicated to her.
AMY: Yeah! So a woman named Katherine Brault (I’m not sure how to say her last name) bought Bonheur’s home (which was in a crumbling state of disrepair) she bought it a few years ago — it took her three years to find a bank that was willing to give her a loan for this. Now, she is slowly and painstakingly uncovering all kinds of treasures that she’s finding in the attic and elsewhere on the property as she renovates the place. She’s luckily also been awarded a financial grant for preserving French cultural heritage, which is helping her turn this dream into a reality, which I think is great. It’s a museum now, but paying guests can stay overnight in Bonheur’s bedroom and the chateau can also be rented out for special events like weddings and conferences — things like that. I loved hearing about the fact that her art studio in the house is sort of like a time capsule. When you go in, you see her painting tools, there’s an easel with one of her unfinished works. She has all sorts of taxidermied animals in that room, and then there’s a pair of her old worn, lace-up leather boots. I kind of got the chills hearing about that studio room.
KIM: It sounds amazing, and according to the Smithsonian article, little by little the world is showing a renewed appreciation for her Bonheur’s work, too. In 2019, the Musee d’Orsay had a small exhibition of her little-known caricatures. I’m happy that people are starting to circle back to her, and it’s also nice to know that she actually knew huge success and admiration while she lived.
AMY: Crazy coincidence, Kim: When we were getting ready to record this, I happened to be watching the Netflix show “The Queen’s Gambit” — I had just started it. And in the second episode, they name-drop Rosa Bonheur!
KIM: No way!
AMY: Yeah! The main character is going to a new home and the person that lives there is sort of giving her the quick tour and points out that the paintings on the wall are reproductions of Rose Bonheur! It makes total sense, too, because “The Queen’s Gambit” is a show about a female chess player who’s sort of fighting to make her mark in this male-dominated chess world, and so the fact that they kind of dropped her name into...Rosa Bonheur’s name in — just seems really fitting, this artist that was also trying to make a name for herself in a man’s world.
KIM: That is amazing. The coincidence is great, and I absolutely want to watch that show now that I hear that, even more. It shows that the creators are really thinking about what they’re doing.
AMY: So yeah, I think that does go to show that she is starting to come back in people’s consciousness. I love the fact that she was just a woman who lived life on her own terms, and that kind of leads us into our next “Lost Lady of Lit,” who’s another woman who didn’t just split from convention but totally OWNED IT.
KIM: That’s right. Next week, we’ll be discussing Marjorie Hillis, a writer who urged women in the 1930s to “Live Alone and Like It” with her wry manifesto that makes the single life look pretty damn awesome, at a time when unmarried women were looked upon with suspicion.
AMY: And we’ve got the authority on Marjorie Hillis coming on the show — her biographer, Joanna Scutts, is going to be here to chat with us next week, and it’s going to be a really fun one, I think.
KIM: Yeah, so until then, check out our show notes to find out more about today’s topic, Rosa Bonheur, including some links to see her greatest works of art.
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AMY: It’s all on our website, Lostladiesoflit.com. And don’t forget to leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts if you’re enjoying these episodes. It really helps new listeners find us.
Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. “Lost Ladies of Lit” is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.