Rosa Bonheur, Landscapes

"Landscape with Deer" by Rosa Bonheur

"Rosa Bonheur's love for the countless creatures that served her as models throughout her long life did not lessen her love of scenery, a love that is indicated in every one of her completed pictures. Some of the landscapes found in her studio after her death were works of the highest beauty and feeling. As with her pictures of animals, she had an intuition for atmosphere in landscape - quiet and peace brood amongst the sedges of the forest pool; the haze of harvest heat hangs over the golden sheaves and half obscures the encircling hills.

The rugged side of nature appealed to her perhaps the more strongly. She specially delighted in the reproduction of physical force, latent or in action. In one of the best of her landscapes a mountain stream rushes frothing and turbulent down a rocky gorge, which is bordered on either hand by pine trees. Suddenly there is a sharp fall in the rocks, and the water, divided by a great boulder, rolls in two avalances of white out of sight. A high mountain closes the gorge to the spectotor, and serves as a background for the waterfall. The effect is rugged and strong in the extreme.

Her attitude to all Nature had something in it deeper than the desire for 'good subjects' of the mere maker of pictures. She attempted pictures, so great in conception that few artists of her age and experience would have dared to enter on their execution. From her earliest days as painter she saw Nature on a grand scale, herein showing her temperament, and the wideness of her outlook upon life."

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