“French painter and sculptor. She received her training from her father, Raymond Bonheur, an artist and ardent Saint-Simonian who encouraged her artistic career and independence. Precocious and talented, she began making copies at the Louvre at the age of fourteen and first exhibited at the Salon in 1841. Her sympathetic portrayal of animals was influenced by prevailing trends in natural history and by her deep affinity for animals, especially horses. Bonheur’s art, as part of the Realist current that emerged in the 1840s, was grounded in direct observation of nature and meticulous draftsmanship. She kept a small menagerie, frequented slaughter houses and dissected animals to gain anatomical knowledge. Although painting was her primary medium, she also sculpted, or modeled, studies of animals, several of which were exhibited at the Salons. In 1848 she received a lucrative commission from the State for Ploughing in the Nivernails, which when exhibited the next year brought her further critical and popular acclaim. She exhibited regularly at the Salon until 1855. Her paintings sold well and were especially popular in Great Britain and the USA. Her spectacular success in Great Britain, her eccentric lifestyle and her militant feminism no doubt contributed to her mixed critical reception at home. Bonheur, who wore her hair short, smoked and worked in masculine attire, was a nonconformist who transcended gender categories and painted, according to various critics, like a man.”

(Biographical source: Turner, Jane, ed. The Dictionary of Art. New York: Macmillan Limited, 1996.)