Rosa Bonheur

"Rosa Bonheur" by François Crastre is a biography of the nineteenth-century French artist, Rosa Bonheur. She was best known as a painter of animals (animalière). She also made sculptures in a realistic style. A French government commission led to Bonheur's first great success, Ploughing in the Nivernais, exhibited in 1849 and now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Bonheur exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts and The Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Though she was more popular in England than in her native France, she was decorated with the French Legion of Honour by the Empress Eugénie in 1865 and was promoted to Officer of the order in 1894. She was the first female artist to be given this award.