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"Why wouldn't I be proud of being a woman? My father, that enthusiastic apostle of humanity, repeated to me many times that woman's mission was to uplift the human race, that she was the Messiah of future centuries. I owe to his doctrines the great and proud ambition ... for the sex ... whose independence I will uphold until my last day. Moreover, I am persuaded that the future belongs to us." - Rosa Bonheur
Bonheur's father was associated with the Saint-Simonian Socialists whose programs included equality for women. Bonheur herself became internationally renowned as a painter of animals. She rejected the ferocious, exotic, and often bloody subjects of other ROMANTIC artists (e.g., DELACROIX and BARYE) to paint working animals like the oxen in Plowing in the Nivenzais ( 1849 ). This painting may have been inspired by a passage about rural life in one of George Sand's novels. Horse Fair ( 1853) bursts with the energy of magnificent, barely restrainable horses. For 50 years it was among the most widely admired paintings in the West. For her research Bonheur went not just to country fairs, but also to slaughterhouses. For the latter, she had to get permission from the prefect of police to dress in the appropriate attire, which was men's clothing. She explains this in her Reminiscences (published posthumously, 1910), which is quoted from above. In 1894 Bonheur became the first woman officer of the French Legion of Honor. Queen Victoria and Cornelius Vanderbilt were among her admirers and clients.
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