Sketch of Five Bulls with Color Notes

Description Rosa Bonheur was the most successful female artist of the19th century. She specialized in paintings of animals. Bonheur's art was underpinned by detailed, analytical study, and she is known to have visited slaughterhouses and dissected animals to acquire an understanding of anatomy. This annotated drawing proves her attention to detail when sketching from life. In the 1850s, Bonheur kept a collection of horses, sheep, and goats in her Paris studio for study purposes. Later, she kept an even larger menagerie, including lions, at her château in By at the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, where she moved in 1860 and lived for the rest of her life ("Rosa Bonheur," Bordeaux, 1997).

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
1/01/2002	Treatment	examined for exhibition; mounted; other

Exhibitions

• A Connoisseur's Portfolio: Nineteenth-century Drawings and Watercolors in the Walters Art Gallery. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1983.
• The Essence of Line: French Drawings from Ingres to Degas. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma. 2005-2006.
• Public Property. 2012.

Provenance William T. / Henry Walters Collection, Baltimore [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Inscriptions color notations overall

Credit Acquired by William T. or Henry Walters