Rosa Bonheur Research Paper

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Pages: 3

Rosa Bonheur an age defining woman of her time, rarely during the 19th century was there an artistic career and recognition of a woman that succeeded that of her male counterparts. History recognizes very few females from this time period that have any artistic authority, but Rosa Bonheur established herself as one of the best and foremost animal painters, tied in with landscape painting and the Realist tradition. Through contacts, exhibitions, and reproductions disseminated worldwide, Rosa Bonheur’s work was well known throughout Europe and America. Her unusual ways attracted considerable public attention and she harnessed this interest throughout her life and gained recognition artistically, for her work, becoming one of the most original figures of the 19th century. Marie-Rosalie Bonheur was born March 16th, 1822 in Bordeaux, France. Rosa Bonheur was one of four …show more content…
After failed attempts at boarding school and an apprenticeship with a dressmaker, Rosa began her artistic training with her father at the age of thirteen. She never attended formal art classes seeing as the traditional École des Beaux-Arts ,stating that women were not allowed at this time, but progressed under the artistic teachings of her father. Like many artists before her Rosa began her training with the standard procedures of copying paintings of the masters in the Louvre. Though several of these copies were sold quickly , Raymond considered this training inadequate and encouraged his children to sketch directly from nature. In 1842, the family moved to the Rue Rumford, a section of Paris close to fields, farms, and animals, where Rosa and her siblings could develop their talent through realistic drawing and painting. Rosa was often seen at “masculine” areas such as horse fairs and the slaughterhouses of Paris in order to gain a deeper understanding of the ranges of animal emotion and