Rosa Bonheur, Franco-Prussian War

"Lion's Head" by Rosa Bonheur

"Then came the Franco-German war of 1870, and the siege of Paris. The Forest of Fontainebleau was overrun by the German soldiery, and the peasants around By were reduced almost to starvation. Rosa Bonheur had resolutely refused to leave her home, and when the villagers applied to her in their distress, she gave them twenty sacks of corn that had been sent to her from Odessa. There was every danger that the chateau, as well as the numerous works of the painter which were kept there, might suffer at the hands of the Germans, who did not respect property whenever billeting was necessary. 

She says herself that during the war she was utterly unable to work; she spent her time in succouring her poorer neighbours, and especially in helping fugitive French soldiers. 'For some months,' she says, 'I had no heart for work. I read. I thought. I waited. When the peace was signed which gave us back our lives, I began to work with redoubled ardour.' 

It was then that she began the series of paintings of lions, tigers, and panthers, which principally occupied her brush during the next ten years. She made drawings everywhere, in the Jardin des Plantes, in circuses, and menageries, in short, wherever she could find wild animals - studying not only the anatomy and lines of the feline race, but also the temperamental characteristics of its various branches, a care that gave her paintings the appearance of being portraits of individual animals."

To be continued

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