Rosa Bonheur Criticized

"Head of a Donkey" by Rosa Bonheur

"After receiving the Cross of the Legion of Honour, it was impossible to refrain from exhibiting her work in France, and consequently she sent no less than twelve large works to the Paris Exhibition of 1867. But her long abstention had made her unpopular with artists and critics. Jealousy of her success, and of the large amount of money she drew from the sale of her pictures in England, may also have had some effect, but whatever the reason, the jury only awarded her a medal of the second class, an award that was obviously unfair, seeing that ten of the pictures she sent were amongst her best efforts. 

The feeling of bitterness against her found expression in the newspapers, and especially in an article by a leading French art critic of the time, who said that 'since her adoption by the English, her work had been scarcely seen in French exhibitions, and not even in picture sales.' He accused her of deliberately setting to work to study the methods of Landseer and other favourite painters of 'sport britannique,' and declared that she had practically become a pupil of the English animal painter.

It is not known whether these criticisms and the almost universally expressed opinion that she had practically ignored her own country for the sake of gaining money from foreigners, had any influence with the painter, but after 1867 she did not exhibit again, not even at the great Paris Exhibitions of 1878 and 1889, and it was not until the Salon of 1899 that the French public had any opportunity of seeing her work.

She lived in the greatest seclusion at By, painting and studying from nature with the same ardour and care for detail that had distinguished her as a young girl."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)