Museum of Fine Arts,
18 May-18 September 2022
Musée d'Orsay,
October 18, 2022-January 15, 2023
On the occasion of the bicentenary of Rosa Bonheur's birth in Bordeaux, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in her hometown and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, are organizing a major retrospective of her work. The Château de Rosa Bonheur in Thomery (Seine-et-Marne), where the artist lived for nearly half a century, as well as the Departmental Museum of Barbizon painters are the exceptional partners of the exhibition. The bicentenary of Rosa Bonheur's birth is included in the calendar of France Mémoire 2022 commemorations. This is the first retrospective dedicated to the artist since the one presented in 1997 in Bordeaux, Barbizon and New York.
A major national and international event, this event honors an extraordinary, innovative and inspiring artist. A true icon of the emancipation of women, Rosa Bonheur placed the living world at the heart of her work and her existence. She committed herself to the recognition of animals in their singularity. Through her great technical mastery, she knew how to restore both animal anatomy and psychology. This exhibition allows the public to (re)discover the power and richness of her art, as well as her life as a free woman, which has become legendary, and her work, popular in the United States and Great Britain.
Rosa Bonheur, Studies of dogs © M usée des Beaux-Arts, Photos: F. Deval.
This exhibition is presented in 2022 in Bordeaux and then in Paris. In Bordeaux, it unfolds between the Galerie des Beaux-Arts and the north wing of the museum and brings together nearly 200 works – paintings, graphic arts, sculptures, photographs and documents – from the most prestigious public and private collections in Europe and the United States. By its subject and its stakes, at the heart of the news, this exhibition is part of the international trend of exhibitions devoted to women artists and the renewed interest in the animal theme which will be honored at the occasion of the Fontainebleau Art History Festival this year.
A powerful and innovative work
Coming from a family of artists, Rosa Bonheur produces an abundant body of work, the fruit of her tireless observation of the animals that surround her and which she seeks to study by all possible means. Drawing her inspiration from her daily life but also from her travels, in Auvergne, in the Nivernais, in the Pyrenees, as well as in Scotland, she shows an insatiable curiosity for the diversity of species and their ecosystem. She is also fascinated by the wild beauty of the wide open spaces of the American West, and its inhabitants, human or not, even if she was never able to get there. The artist took great pleasure in depicting Buffalo Bill and all the actors in the Wild West Show in 1889.
Rosa Bonheur knew how to impose her talent very early on and achieved an exemplary career punctuated with honors and rewards. She measured herself against the greatest masters of the animal genre, long reserved for men, and confronted herself with monumental formats, giving her works the grandeur of history painting.
A lover of life
The way she looks at the world around her bears witness to a quite exceptional vision of both flora and fauna. Fascinated by animals, Rosa Bonheur had gathered around her, in her property in By, on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, a formidable menagerie, counting dozens of different species, where sheep, dogs, deer and fawns.
Placing the animal at the heart of her artistic creation within spectacular compositions or by isolating it in real portraits, Rosa Bonheur knew how to create an expressive work, of great realism and devoid of sentimentality, nourished by scientific discoveries and the new attention paid to local animal species, calling into question the hierarchy between species.
The exhibition plays on breaks in scale, the artist having painted very small formats or, on the contrary, monumental works, most often panoramic and dynamic, as well as real full-length portraits of animals. This is how Rosa Bonheur depicts the majesty of the deer in the King of the Forest (Private collection, USA) or the beauty and power of half-wild horses in La Toulaison du Blé en Camargue (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux ). The artist states their belonging to the rural world and peasant life while exalting their telluric strength. It celebrates agriculture and the fertility of Mother Earth, and gives shape to a poem by Frédéric Mistral set to music by his friend Charles Gounod.
An extraordinary personality
Celebrated since her lifetime on both sides of the Atlantic, this fascinating personality, whose exhibition proposes to reveal little explored, even unknown aspects, knew how to impose herself both as a free woman and an officially recognized artist in a very corseted century. The first female artist to receive the Legion of Honour, Rosa Bonheur was able to benefit from an effective commercial strategy and join forces with the most eminent dealers and collectors to dominate the art market and gain financial and moral independence. A true "star" in her time, a virtuoso and demanding artist, she organized her life around her work and the incessant quest for perfection, accompanied by women, and more particularly by her lifelong friend Nathalie Micas, who lived by her side more forty years old,
Rosa Bonheur was quickly perceived as a model to follow in the quest for independence for women, and artists in particular. Articles and reviews, French, but especially English or American, testify to this inspiring force for future generations. The spread of the artist's image was such that, in addition to numerous painted, photographed, or engraved portraits, Rosa Bonheur's work, like her portrait, became the subject of what we would call today today “by-products”.
One of the originalities of the exhibition consists in presenting an important selection of painted and drawn studies and sketches, allowing to appreciate the part of the drawing in the creative process of the artist, and giving to see sheets of a rare beauty. A completely new monumental sketch, recently discovered at the Château Rosa Bonheur, is on display for the first time, along with drawn photographs that reveal an unexpected aspect of the artist's creation. More unusual parts of his work often intended for a more intimate sphere (paintings on pebbles, carved chestnuts, etc.) are also presented. Finally, the exhibition emphasizes the personality of Rosa Bonheur, her humour, her taste for caricatures and the fruitful relationships she had with personalities from the musical world,
George Achille-Fould, Portrait of Rosa Bonheur © Museum of Fine Arts, Photo: F. Deval.
A work that still resonates today
200 years after her birth, the art and personality of Rosa Bonheur are more topical than ever: the place of women in art and society, the approach to nature and the living, the animal cause and the ecofeminism. The exhibition is accompanied by a multidisciplinary cultural program consistent with the actions in favor of gender equality that the museum has been carrying out for several years and a catalog which is the first scientific publication giving an overview multiple aspects of the work of Rosa Bonheur (Co-edition Musée d'Orsay / Flammarion, 45 euros).
Visible at the Galerie du musée des Beaux-Arts, this exhibition continues in the north wing of the museum with Rosa Bonheur's immense masterpiece, La Toulaison du Blé en Carmargue , some of her sculptures and works by his family, in particular his brothers Isidore and Auguste.
In addition to the first presentation of the film Bonheur by performer and filmmaker Nicolas Boone (2021, production and collection Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA), film visible at the reception of the North wing of the Museum of Fine Arts until September 18 .
dates
Gallery of the museum and north wing of the
Rosa Bonheur, Milling wheat in the Camargue , 1864-1899 © Museum of Fine Arts of Bordeaux, Photo: F. Deval.
And also :
at the Château de Rosa Bonheur in Thomery: presentation of two exhibitions: The Museum of Lost Works (March 9-August 28, 2022) and Rosa Bonheur Intimate (September 17, 2022-January 30, 2023).
at the Château de Fontainebleau: Capture the Soul exhibition. Rosa Bonheur and animal art (June 3, 2022-January 23, 2023).
Rosa Bonheur, Etude de cheval bai, Musée d’Orsay, déposé au Musée national du château de Fontainebleau.
