1901.7
Portrait of Rosa Bonheur
Artist
Anna Elizabeth Klumpke
(1856 - 1942)
Title
Portrait of Rosa Bonheur
Creation Date
1898
Century
19th century
Dimensions
21 7/8 in. x 17 15/16 in. (55.5 cm. x 45.5 cm.)
Object Type
drawing
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
pastel on paper
Credit Line
Gift of the Misses Harriet Sarah and Mary Sophia Walker
Copyright
Public Domain
Accession Number
1901.7
Anna Klumpke’s pastel portrait of the French painter Rosa Bonheur was created a year before Bonheur’s death. Celebrated in her day as the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century, Bonheur was known for her realistic renderings of animals, especially horses. Klumpke, a native of San Francisco and a student at the Académie Julian in Paris, met Bonheur in France in 1895. Shortly thereafter the two women began a professional and romantic partnership that lasted until Bonheur’s death. In this pastel drawing, which served as a preparatory sketch for a larger oil portrait now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Klumpke depicts Bonheur wearing her medal of the Order of the Legion of Honor.