Rosa Bonheur: The Artist's (Auto)biography
- Book Review,
by Anna Klumpke
From Publishers Weekly
A cigar-smoking, cross-dressing eccentric a la George Sand, Bonheur (1822-1899) was once one of the 19th century's most popular artists and the first woman to be awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Shortly before her death, Bonheur's realistic animal paintings fell out of favor, and she was largely ignored until a changing academic climate revived interest in her life. In the illuminating introduction to her translation of this 1908 biography by Bonheur's lover, van Slyke argues that Bonheur's life merits a closer look, particularly as seen through Klumpke's eyes. However, those expecting "a bold story of lesbian love" as the introduction suggests will be disappointed. Patient readers will be rewarded with hidden gems in Bonheur's frank voice ("Had I ever married, domestic cares would have swallowed me up, as they did my mother"), which Klumpke successfully mimics, blurring the lines between autobiography and biography. Drawing on her own meticulous journal entries as well as Bonheur's letters, sketches and diaries, Klumpke traces Bonheur's trailblazing life and recounts how she met Bonheur, fell in love and became her official portraitist, companion and sole heir. The book gets bogged down in mundane details, and art historians who want critical context are best advised to turn to Dore Ashton's 1981 Rosa Bonheur: A Life and a Legend. What Klumpke's biography does, however, is "reveal in a sympathetic light the ways that women could and did love, live, work, and thrive among themselves in chosen retreat from a patriarchal century." Photos. Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Hailed by her contemporaries as the most popular animal-painter, male or female, of the nineteenth century, the French artist Rosa Bonheur (1822-99) lived to see her name become a household word. In a century that did its best to keep women "in their place," Bonheur, like George Sand--to whom she was often compared--defined herself outside of the social and legal codes of her time. To the horror and bewilderment of many, she earned her own money, managed her own property, wore trousers, hunted, smoked, and lived in retreat with female companions in a little chateau near Fountainebleau named The Domain of Perfect Affection.
Rosa Bonheur: The Artist's (Auto)Biography brings this extraordinary woman to life in a unique blend of biography and autobiography. Coupling her own memories with Bonheur's first-person account, Anna Klumpke, a young American artist who was Bonheur's lover and chosen portraitist, recounts how she came to meet and fall in love with Bonheur. Bonheur's account of her own life story, set nicely within Klumpke's narrative, sheds light on such topics as gender formation, institutional changes in the art world, governmental intervention in the arts, the social and legal regulation of dress codes, and the perceived transgressive nature of female sexual companionship in a repressive society, all with the distinctive flavor of Bonheur's artistic personality.
Gretchen van Slyke's translation provides a rare glimpse into the unconventional life of this famous French painter, and renders accessible for the first time in English this public statement of Bonheur's artistic credo. More importantly, whether judged by her century's standards (or perhaps even our own), it details a story of lesbian love that is bold, unconventional, and courageous.
"The remarkable life of Rosa Bonheur, one of the most highly decorated artists and certainly the best known female artist of her time in nineteenth-century France, is long overdue for further scrutiny." --Therese Dolan, Temple University
Gretchen van Slyke is Associate Professor of French, University of Vermont.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French
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