Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur was the most famous woman painter of the nineteenth century, celebrated for her animal paintings and sculptures. She studied animals in slaughterhouses and horse fairs, for which she obtained police permission to wear trousers. The Horse Fair, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, made her name in Britain and America, and a smaller version is in the National Gallery in London. She lived at By, near Fontainebleau, and was the first woman artist made an officer of the Légion d’honneur.