Artwork · 19th century · Rosa Bonheur

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The Horse Fair

Rosa Bonheur1852–55Oil on canvas244.5 × 506.7 cm

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At a glance

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At a horse market in Paris, handlers drive powerful horses past in a cloud of dust.
Rosa Bonheur painted it in 1852–55.
On a canvas about 2.4 meters high and 5 meters wide, black, chestnut, white, and dappled gray horses surge across in a tangle.

Reading the picture

4 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Zoom in on the center. A black horse rears up with its front legs high, and a man in a blue shirt hangs on to keep it under control. Right beside it, a white horse in a red halter rises on its hind legs too. A man in a white shirt grabs the rope from below. You can follow the white mane strand by strand as it flies in the wind.
Drop down to the legs of the gray horse on the right. Dark spots sit in round patches on its pale coat, and the color deepens to black toward the lower legs. Shadows fall under the big hooves, and the tail is tied up in a loop. This is the solid body of a working horse built to pull heavy loads.
Look far to the left, past the trees. Through the haze of dust, a building with a domed roof rises faintly. It is the chapel dome of the Salpetriere hospital, close to the Boulevard de l'Hopital in Paris, where this market was held.
Zoom in on the lower right corner. The signature Rosa Bonheur is written on the dirt ground. A woman painter's name stands clearly at the foot of this enormous picture.

When it was painted

In the early 1850s Rosa Bonheur was about thirty, and she had a new habit. Sketchbook in hand, she kept going back to the horse market on the Boulevard de l'Hopital in Paris. For many months she drew the horses there, studying how their muscles moved and how they walked and pulled.

A skirt was no help in a crowd of horse dealers. At the time, a woman in Paris needed permission from the police to wear trousers. Bonheur got that permission and moved through the market dressed like a man.

Her first teacher was her father, Raymond Bonheur, who taught drawing. By 1849 she was already a well-known animal painter, thanks to Ploughing in the Nivernais, a picture of oxen turning a field that the French state had commissioned. After the oxen came this: a herd of horses on a canvas about five meters wide.

When it went on view at the Paris Salon of 1853, it caused a stir. Bonheur called it her own Parthenon frieze, thinking of the parade of horsemen carved along the walls of the ancient Greek temple. Even after the Salon closed, she kept working on it.

Then the picture went traveling. The dealer Ernest Gambart bought it and showed it in Britain, and later it crossed the Atlantic and passed through the hands of American collectors. At an auction in 1887, Cornelius Vanderbilt paid 53,000 dollars for it and gave it straight to the Metropolitan Museum.

Zoom in on the signature at lower right and look at the number beside it. It says 1853. The date stopped at the year of the Salon, but these horses kept running under her brush for a while after that.

The painter

Rosa Bonheur

1822–1899

All paintings by Rosa Bonheur →

The Horse Fair

Hidden stories in this painting

The Painter Who Needed a Police Permit to Wear TrousersTo study horses for this enormous canvas, Rosa Bonheur went to a Paris horse market. First, she needed a piece of paper from the police.

Questions to think about

Look for itCan you find the horses rearing on their hind legs, and the people straining to hold them?
Why?Why do you think Bonheur chose a wild, rearing moment instead of horses standing calmly?
What about you?Bonheur needed official permission to change her clothes so she could do her work. Are there people today who still have to ask for more permission than others, just because of their gender?

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