Bonheur, Rosa [key], 1822–99, French painter, mainly of animals. She was a pupil of her father, Raymond Bonheur. Her paintings were regularly exhibited in the Salon from 1841. Bonheur's informed and sympathetic pictures of animal life were remarkably enlightened in approach. They gained her wide popularity, particularly in England and America, where much of her work is to be seen, and she was the most famous and wealthiest woman artist in 19th-century France. Her most famous painting, The Horse Fair (1853–55), is in the Metropolitan Museum. Despite her reputation as one of the great realist painters, she is largely forgotten today.
See biography by C. Hewitt (2019).
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