BONHEUR, ROSA (1822-1899), French Artist

By her early twenties, Bonheur had established herself, both in Europe and abroad, as a brilliant painter of animals. Her most famous painting, The Horse Fair, was purchased by Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1887 for a then-record sum of $55,000; it now hangs in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. A forceful, strongly unconventional woman, Bonheur had a
female lover, Nathalia Micas, for over forty years, and wore men's clothing - at a time when it was considered indecent for women to do so both for personal pleasure and so that she could more conveniently wander through farms and slaughterhouses to research and sketch animal anatomy. Chided by a male acquaintance one evening for frequenting such places unchaperoned, Bonheur retorted,"Oh my dear sir, if you knew how little I care for your sex, you wouldn't get any ideas in your head. The fact is, in the way of males, I like only the bulls I paint."