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"Why shouldn’t I be proud to be a woman? My father, that enthusiastic apostle of humanity, told me again and again that it was a woman’s mission to improve the human race… To his doctrines I owe my great and glorious ambition for the sex to which I proudly belong, whose independence I’ll defend till my dying day. Besides, I’m convinced the future is ours." - Rosa Bonheur

Unconventional, trailblazing, and unapologetically feminist, Rosa Bonheur was born in Bordeaux and became one of the most acclaimed female artists of her time.

Bonheur trained with her father, a painter, from a young age and proved to be a precocious and gifted student, exhibiting at the Salon for the first time at the age of 19. Her love of animals, especially horses, provided inspiration for most of her art. She worked from a variety of sources: direct observation in nature, her small, private menagerie, slaughterhouses, copying paintings at the Louvre, and even dissection for the purpose of gaining anatomical knowledge. Her preference was direct observation, allowing her a close, personal view of her subjects and the ability to draw them in a variety of positions as they naturally moved.

In 1855, at the age of 33, she completed what is considered to be her masterpiece, The Horse Fair, a monumental painting now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The piece was an enormous success, putting her name on the map and garnering her a meeting with the Queen of England. Though her art was traditional in nature, her life (by Victorian standards) was far from it. Bonheur was a lesbian with a long term partner, Nathalie Micas, and she wore men’s clothing for which she required, and was given, formal permission from the local police. She is famously noted as saying: “As far as males go, I only like the bulls I paint.”

Bonheur became one of the most successful female artists in the 19th century thanks to her masterful depictions of the natural world and all its creatures. In 1865, she was the first female artist to be awarded the French Legion of Honor, one of many accolades she achieved in her life including prizes at the Paris Salon, a gold medal at the 1848 World’s Fair, and finally, a promotion in 1894 to Officer of the Legion of Honor. Her legacy lives on in her paintings, housed in esteemed collections worldwide, and Château de Rosa Bonheur, her home and studio which is now a museum.