Like George Sand and Sarah Bernhardt, Rosa Bonheur wore male attire (which enabled her to
work under difficult conditions- especially for a single woman) and smoked in public. This independent and opinionated woman is also an early feminist figure: Self-taught, she managed to impose herself in a macho world
Though forgotten today in France, she enjoyed a lot of success there with her paintings “Ploughing in Nivernais”(D.R Musée d’Orsay, Paris), and “Threshing in Auvergne” (D.R.Château de Fontainebleau) and in England and the United States because of her painting “The Horse fair”(D.R Metropolitan Museum of New York).
