Rosa Bonheur, Studio Practice

Portrait of Rosa Bonheur with her dog Charly
by Anna Elisabeth Klumpke

Rosa Bonheur’s studio at Château de By

"Madame Consuelo Fould, who painted a portrait of Rosa Bonheur, her right hand resting on the head of a great St. Bernard, whilst a palette and brushes are held in the left, says that Rosa had a horror of anything in the nature of a 'drier,' and of mediums that give immediate effect at the cost of the preservation of the picture. She used her colours without any admixture, leaving them to dry by themselves, sometimes for two years, returning to work upon them at long intervals,and using very little oil. 

She had two sets of palettes, one always kept scrupulously clean, the other covered with every variety of colour. This set, by means of some process known to herself, at the end of a year look like pieces of coloured marble,as they absorbed all the oil. She attached great importance to them, as they enabled her to judge of certain effects of combined colour. 

Her brushes she cleaned herself with the utmost care.Despite her energy she worked slowly,and this combined with her system of allowing some of her pictures -especially the more important ones - to dry so gradually, not infrequently resulted in her patrons being obliged to wait for months for a picture that was practically completed.

The early morning found her in her studio sketching and studying from one of the animals that formed what was a veritable menagerie at By. She found her animals more tractable in the early hours of the day, but she possessed such understanding of their natures, that even the most difficult rarely resisted her influence for long. She loved them, and used to say that although we cannot always understand them, they invariably understand us."

To be continued

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