Repos du Betail

Rosa Bonheur’s first teacher was her father; she later became a pupil of Leon Cogniet. At a young age she showed extraordinary talent for drawing people and animals, outlining them with great skill. She also showed an independence of mind and strong will from an early age; she ran away from school and then from a workshop where she was apprenticed, declaring that she wanted to be an artist. She overcame her father’s opposition to the idea and persevered. She undertook her first studies in the Bois de Boulogne, which was still fairly wild in her youth. At this time, the French philosohper Felicite de Lamennais (1782-1854) and the author George Sand both had a decisive influence on freeing her from prejudicial thinking. She wore men’s clothes to visit local slaughterhauses and fairs and mingled with horse-dealers and cattle men. She first exhibited at the Salon of 1841with two animal paintings. At the next exhibition, alongside her paintings, she exhibited a terracota sculpture of sheep. At the1843 exhibition, in addition to paintings, she sent a plaster sculpture of a bull.