The Horse Fair by Rosa Bonheur

1031 Words3 Pages

The Horse Parade
Dozens of horses are charging through the fair grounds, each hoof vibrating the ground, which causes chaos to erupt. Some horses are white as for a person of royalty, and others a mysterious brown. Through all this chaos, Rosa Bonheur paints what is before her. Her painting is called The Horse Fair. The painting itself is 8 feet tall by 16 feet wide.1 The Horse Fair is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.1 Bonheur uses a panoramic view in her painting.2 The Horse Fair was inspired by the horse market that Rosa Bonheur use to visit on Boulevard De l’Ho ̂pital.1 The building in the upper far left of the painting is called Asylum on Salpetriere, which is located in Paris.3 The people on the hill in the upper right corner of the painting are potential customers evaluating the horses to see which horse to purchase.1 Through this painting, Bonheur shows the power and magnificence of the horses as the owners of these horses are using all of their strength to control them.3 Bonheur included a self portrait of herself on a horse in her painting, which can be located next to the black and white horses that are rearing up.4 The audience can notice the shadows that are coming off each of the horses. The shadows are through the use of chiaroscuro. The shadows make the horses look more real, as if they are actually moving through the fair ground. The author will prove Bonheur’s use of naturalism in her painting The Horse Fair by analyzing Bonheur in terms of historical context, anatomical accuracy, and structural elements.
Rosa Bonheur was born March 16th, 1822 in Bordeaux, France.1 Rosa was the oldest of four children; her father was an art teacher and her mother was a musician.2 She came from an ...

... middle of paper ...

... is displayed in the painting because one would actually experience the moment that Bonheur captures.

Sources:

“Art 236.” :The Horse Fair. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. http://crystalrlindberg.blogspot.com/2012/04/horse-fair.html.

Ashton, Dore, and Denise Browne Hare.Rosa Bonheur: a life and a legend. New York: Viking, 1981. Print.

“Oxford Dictionary”: definition of naturalism in Oxford dictionary. Web. 14 April. 2014. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/naturalism

Gardner, Helen, and Fred S. Kleiner. Gardner’s Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective. Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2014. Print

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art-The Horse Fair.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art-The Horse Fair. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/435702

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