"At one time Rosa Bonheur had a complete menagerie in her home: a lion and lioness, a stag, a wild sheep, a gazelle, horses, etc. One of her pets was a young lion whom she allowed to run about and often romped with.... I was easier in mind when this leonine pet gave up the ghost."(1) So wrote a close friend of Rosa Bonheur in recalling the artist's passion for animals. The artist received special dispensation from the police to wear trousers and a smock to visit butcher shops and slaughterhouses. It was in these gritty locales that she closely studied animal anatomy. Bonheur also wore her hair short, rode astride, smoked cigarettes in public, and achieved a successful career as an animalier, demonstrating her independent spirit.

Born in Bordeaux, Rosa Bonheur received her training from her father who was a minor landscape painter. In 1829 she moved with her family to Paris. While unconventional in her ambitions and personal conduct, Bonheur was traditional in her working method. She studied her subjects carefully and produced many preparatory sketches before she applied paint to canvas. Bonheur's reputation grew steadily in the 1840s; she regularly exhibited her animal paintings and sculptures at the Paris Salon from 1841 to 1853. The Salon favored traditional work, and most artists sought to exhibit at the annual shows as it was the primary way for their work to be publicly seen.

The government of the Second Republic awarded Bonheur a commission. The resulting painting, Plowing in Nivernais (Musée Nationale du Château de Fontainebleau), exhibited at the Salon of 1849, firmly established the artist's career. In 1853 she won international acclaim with her monumental painting The Horse Fair (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) which was exhibited in England and which Queen Victoria greatly admired.

(1) Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 167.