Rosa Bonheur, "Corn Thrashing"

"Corn Thrashing," an unfinished work. The horses
in this are life size.

"It would be impossible to arrive at the exact number of Rosa Bonheur's pictures, as the larger number were never exhibited and are scattered through England and the United States in private houses. Over sixty pictures from her brush appeared in exhibitions, chiefly the Salon, between 1841 and 1899, and a list has been drawn up of some two hundred others which went straight from the artist's studio to the purchaser. 

Yet this large number does not wholly represent the number of her pictures, for it is known that a considerable proportion have been lost to sight. On an average she painted seven pictures a year, and yet despite this haste she would frequently keep a canvas on her easel for years, as for example, 'Corn Thrashing,' upon which she was occupied for two decades, and which was unfinished at her death.

Amongst the mass of drawings and studies found in her studio there was a series of designs which showed how carefully she had built up the arrangement of this picture, and how by constant rejection, re-arrangement, and re-drawing she had finally arrived at a composition that satisfied her. Masses of corn are spread over a field, and over them eleven horses, life size, are galloping. In her sketches she had given the horses every imaginable movement and colour, and death surprised her before she was able to complete the result of her long studies.

Attitude after attitude as is indicated by the papers upon which the sketches were made, were put aside as unsuitable or unnatural for the particular circumstances of the subject, but these poses may be at once recognized in other pictures painted during the long period 'Corn Thrashing' remained upon the easel. These rejected studies served frequently in their turn for the basis of another picture, rapidly painted and bought from her easel before the colours upon it were dry."

To be continued

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