Artist Rosa Bonheur

If you were to ask who the most famous, highly paid artist of the 19^th century was in France, the names Ingres, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne and Van Gogh would most likely be cited by most people. And they’d all be wrong. It was a female animal portraitist, Rosa Bonheur who held the no. 1 position. However, she fell into complete oblivion in the 20^th century. Christina Mackenzie explores Rosa Bonheur’s extraordinary story – and how her art is being found by a new audience.

Artist Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur’s resuscitation as an artist over the past five years is entirely due to Katherine Brault and her family, who have single-handedly put the forgotten painter firmly back in the limelight. They didn’t set out to do so, but Brault, who had not heard of the artist previously, stumbled across Bonheur’s former home, the Château de By, whilst house-hunting in the Seine-et-Marne department. Returning Bonheur to her deserved place amongst the 19^th century’s greatest artists has become her life’s work.

The Château de By sits upstream from Paris atop the banks of the river Seine in the small town of Thomery. Thanks to Brault and her daughters, the château is now not only the Brault family home and the Rosa Bonheur museum, but also a very nice tea-room and guesthouse.

Brault, nominated as one of the 100 Women of Culture 2022, is a native of Fontainebleau, some seven kilometres west of Thomery. In 2014, after working in communications, gastronomy, and coaching visual artists, Brault decided to return to her hometown in the wake of a divorce and establish “a cosy, multi-functional guest-house in a large 18th century house.” No such house was on the market, so an estate agent suggested she encompass the 19^th century and visit the Château de By which had been on the market with all its contents for 10 years.

“It was way too expensive for me: €3.5 million! My budget was €1.5 million,” Brault laughs. But the estate agent told her the sale price was “widely negotiable” and then left her alone to wander around the property for three hours. Despite the dust and cobwebs she fell in love with it. In the artist’s studio, she recalls finding herself “in front of the large portrait of Rosa Bonheur and having the impression she was laughing at me, as if to say ‘Ha! Here you are at last!’”

The studio was almost exactly as it was in 1899 when Bonheur died. The château’s two owners, brothers, only came for a few weekends and holidays to undertake repairs and do a bit of maintenance. The house had cost them their marriages and vast sums of money. They were so delighted that Brault was interested that they reduced the price by €1 million!

Brault struggled for three years seeking subsidies, bank loans and partners for the rest of the money. Eventually she was able to buy everything except the items exhibited in the house. She paid rent for them to the two brothers for three years until an arrangement was reached with the Seine-et-Marne department who bought them for €400,000.

Rosa Bonheur Museum

The museum opened on June 1, 2018.

Brault’s hard work and tenacity resulted in her wining funding from the Loto du Patrimoine, a project managed by French journalist Stéphane Bern. On 20 Sept. 2019, President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte (wearing trousers in honour of Bonheur’s special dispensation necessary in the 19^th century to allow her to wear them in public instead of a dress!), accompanied by Bern, came to the château with a cheque for €500,000. The award enabled Brault to repair parts of the roof, the facade of Bonheur’s studio, various beams, the dovecote on the roof and the winter garden whose structure was designed by none other than Gustave Eiffel!

Meanwhile the attics full of notebooks, sketches, animal skins and spiders are slowly revealing their secrets. Amongst the most significant was a large canvas rolled up in the dust which turned out to be the first version of Bonheur’s most famous work “The Horse Fair”. The very large painting hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York while a smaller version is held by the National Gallery in London.

Marie-Rosalie Bonheur was born on 16 March 1822, in Bordeaux to Sophie Dublan de Lahet (known as Marquis) and Raymond Bonheur, an artist. The eldest and most talented of four siblings who all became artists (Auguste and Juliette, painters, and Isidore, a sculptor), she was taught by her father. But when she was 10, he joined the Saint-Simoniens movement (a sort of utopian socialism, a movement which influenced Karl Marx), leaving his family penniless. Sophie died of exhaustion in 1833 aged just 36. She was buried in the paupers’ grave in Montmartre cemetery. Her death had a considerable influence on the life of her daughter, whom she affectionately called Rosa.

Bonheur was convinced animals have a soul. She studied animal anatomy by attending cattle fairs and visiting slaughterhouses. But her presence amongst cattle drovers and butchers led to much ribaldry and vulgarity so she asked for a special permit to wear trousers. The French law forbidding women from wearing trousers was only lifted in 2013, even if nobody had abided by it for years! Brault has not found “a single pair of trousers” amongst Bonheur’s things in the Château, but has found countless dresses and skirts.

Chateau de By

Bonheur was able to live very comfortably from her earnings as an artist. She bought the Château de By, which borders Fontainebleau forest, with the proceeds from just one sale: 40,000 francs (€80,000) for “The Horse Fair” which sold again during her lifetime for 208,000 francs the equivalent today of €416,000!

Bonheur turned the Chateau into quite the zoo, keeping a wide range of animals from sheep and eagles to a couple of lions and a parrot. When the animals died, Bonheur had them stuffed and mounted so they stayed with her on the walls from where they still glassily stare down at visitors!

Another of Bonheur’s precious possessions still in the Château is an outfit gifted to her by Buffalo Bill who spent six months in Paris in 1889 with his Wild West show at the World Fair. Bonheur wanted to meet him so he could tell her how to train the two Mustang horses she’d been given by a wealthy American, and to introduce her to his bisons. She spoke no English, so an interpreter was found – Anna Klumpke, a 33-year-old American portraitist who lived in Paris. Following their meeting, the two women kept in touch and in 1898 at the age of 76, Bonheur agreed to let Klumpke paint her portrait. Klumpke temporarily moved to the château to work on the portrait and ended up also writing Bonheur’s memoirs.

Bonheur died May 25, 1899. Klumpke inherited everything and left Bonheur’s studio as it was. Even the cigarette butts are still there!

The Brault family are restoring the Château de By in such a way that were Rosa Bonheur to return she would find her paints, paintbrushes, and apron almost exactly where she left them 124 years ago.

You can book a guided tour of the Museum Rosa Bonheur at: www.chateau-rosa-bonheur.fr

Christina McKenzie is a Franco-British journalist who writes in both English and French. Married to a Frenchman, she settled 30 years ago near Fontainebleau.