Rosa Bonheur, born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur (16 Mar 1822 – 25 May 1899),
was a French artist, mostly a painter of animals (animalière) but also a sculptor, in a realist style.
Her best-known paintings are Ploughing in the Nivernais, first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1848, and now at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and The Horse Fair (in French: Le marché aux chevaux), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1853 (finished in 1855) and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.
Bonheur was widely considered to be the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century.
Personal life and legacy
Women were often only reluctantly educated as artists in Bonheur’s day, and by becoming such a successful artist she helped to open doors to the #womenartists that followed her.
Bonheur can be viewed as a ” #NewWoman ” of the 19th century; she was known for wearing men’s clothing, but she attributed her choice of trousers to their practicality for working with animals (see Rational dress).
In her romantic life, she was fairly openly a #lesbian; she lived with her first partner, #NathalieMicas, for over 40 years until Micas’ death,
and later began a relationship with the #Americanpainter #AnnaElizabethKlumpke.
At a time when #lesbiansex – particularly tribadism – was regarded as animalistic and deranged by most French officials, Bonheur’s outspokenness about her personal life was groundbreaking. (all via Wikipedia)
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Art by Women - Women in Arts #PalianShow 
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