Marie-Rosalie Bonheur was the daughter of Raymond Bonheur and Sophie Marquis, an artist and a musician, respectively. Earlier in her life, her father encouraged her and all her siblings to become artists. Later in May 1899, due to legal pressure, Anna Klumpke, her estate's heir, had to auction off her collection unseen by the world, and in that Lot of 1847 was a small green sketchbook used first by her father and then by her. After her first submission to the Salon in 1841, she adopted the nickname her mother used to call her: Rosa, as her mother’s premature death had scarred her. She was frequently called an animaliere, someone who specialized in drawing and painting animals. She won international fame in 1853 with her painting The Horse Fair, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Early in her career, she showed a desire to travel; she believed that only by seeing the men and animals in the countryside could she discover their lives and characteristics and understand them. She traveled mainly within France, but the Pyrenees and Scotland proved to be major destinations that influenced her paintings. Her work was traditionally realist, with the deep contrast and play with light showing the emotional depth behind her paintings. She sought to explore themes of the French Revolution, the Second Empire, and even “the Question of Sex”. A Stag is a painting by Bonheur that she must have seen near the woodlands around her house in Fontainebleau. A stag faces us in all its majestic glory, having an ethereal aura, and the soft light signifies the early morning. The leaves glisten with dew and sunlight. And the antlers of the stag stand in all their majestic glory. It gives us a glimpse at how Rosa Bonheur viewed animals and explains her love for them. “I wed art. It is my husband, my world, my life-dream, the air I breathe,” She explains. She was the first woman to receive the Legion of Honor, the highest and most prestigious medal in the French national order of merit, and she had received a special permit to wear pants while working (as her clothing felt restrictive and bothersome while observing in fields) from the police, as wearing pants was strictly for men back then and illegal for women.
I think about Bonheur, sitting in her carriage in the cold, watching Jacques stand motionless in the clearing. I think about the patience it took to wait for the right light, the right angle, the right moment. And I think about the courage it took to paint a woman's name at the bottom of a canvas that powerful. The stag does not roar. He does not charge. He simply exists. And in that existence, he claims the entire room. Bonheur understood that true power does not need to announce itself. It just needs to be seen. And once seen, never forgotten.
