ROSA BONHEURThe most celebrated woman artist of the
19th century was Marie-Rosalie (Rosa) Bonheur(1822–1899).
The winner of the gold medal at the Salon of 1848, Bonheur became
in 1894 the first woman officer in the French Legion of Honor. Bon-
heur received her artistic training from her father, who was a propo-
nent ofSaint-Simonianism,an early-19th-century utopian socialist
movement that championed the education and enfranchisement of
women. As a result of her father’s influence, Bonheur launched her ca-
reer believing that as a woman and an artist, she had a special role to
play in creating a new and perfect society. A Realist passion for accu-
racy in painting drove Bonheur, but she resisted depicting the prob-
lematic social and political situations seen in the work of Courbet,
Millet, Daumier, and other Realists. Rather, she turned to the animal
world—not, however, to the exotic wild animals that so fascinated
Delacroix (FIG. 30-19), but to animals common in the French coun-
tryside, especially horses, but also rabbits, cows, and sheep. She went
to great lengths to observe the anatomy of living horses at the great
Parisian horse fair and spent long hours studying the anatomy of car-
casses in the Paris slaughterhouses. For her best-known work,The
Horse Fair (FIG. 30-32), she adopted a panoramic composition simi-
lar to that in Courbet’s Burial at Ornans (FIG. 30-28). Bonheur filled
her broad canvas with the sturdy farm Percherons and their grooms
seen on parade at the annual Parisian horse sale. Some horses, not quite
broken, rear up. Others plod or trot, guided on foot or ridden by their
keepers. Bonheur recorded the Percherons’ uneven line of march, their
thunderous pounding, and their seemingly overwhelming power
based on her close observation of living animals, even though she ac-
knowledged some inspiration from the Parthenon frieze (FIG. 5-50,
top). The dramatic lighting, loose brushwork, and rolling sky also re-
veal her admiration of the style of Géricault (FIG. 30-15). The equine
drama in The Horse Fair captivated viewers, who eagerly bought en-
graved reproductions of Bonheur’s painting, making it one of the
best-known artworks of the century.ÉDOUARD MANETLike Gustave Courbet,Édouard Manet
(1832–1883) was a pivotal artist during the 19th century. Not only
was his work critical for the articulation of Realist principles, but his
art also played an important role in the development of Impression-
ism in the 1870s (see Chapter 31). Manet’s masterpiece,Le Déjeuner
sur l’Herbe(Luncheon on the Grass; FIG. 30-33), depicts two women,
one nude, and two clothed men enjoying a picnic of sorts. Consis-
tent with Realist principles, Manet based all of the foreground fig-
ures on living people. The seated nude is Victorine Meurend (Manet’s
favorite model at the time), and the gentlemen are his brother Eu-
gène (with cane) and probably the sculptor Ferdinand Leenhof, al-
though scholars have suggested other identifications. The two men
wear fashionable Parisian attire of the 1860s, and the foreground
nude not only is a distressingly unidealized figure type but also seems
disturbingly unabashed and at ease, gazing directly at the viewer with-
out shame or flirtatiousness.
This audacious painting outraged the public—rather than a
traditional pastoral scene, like the Renaissance Pastoral Symphony
(FIG. 22-35), which featured anonymous idealized figures in an idyl-
lic setting,Le Déjeuner seemed merely to represent ordinary men
and promiscuous women in a Parisian park. One hostile critic, no
doubt voicing public opinion, said: “A commonplace woman of the
demimonde, as naked as can be, shamelessly lolls between two dandies
dressed to the teeth. These latter look like schoolboys on a holiday, per-
petrating an outrage to play the man....This is a young man’s practi-
cal joke—a shameful, open sore.”^8 Manet surely anticipated criticism of
his painting, but shocking the public was not his primary aim. His goal
was more complex and involved a reassessment of the entire range ofRealism 80330-33Édouard
Manet,Le Déjeuner
sur l’Herbe (Luncheon
on the Grass), 1863. Oil
on canvas, 7 8 8 .
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Manet was widely crit-
icized for both his shock-
ing subject matter and
his manner of painting.
Moving away from
illusionism, he used
colors to flatten form
and to draw attention to
the painting surface.1 ft.