Sixteenth century Europe saw the rise of the “Academic Art” movement, with its strict rules and emphasis on intellectualism and moral messaging, sweep across the art world and cement its hold for decades to come.  Art was seen as a tool to impose cultural control and broadcast the political authority of the upper class and the crown.  By the early nineteenth century, however, young artists began to move away from Academicism and resist the institutionalized genre taught in established art institutes.  Academic Art had focused mainly on historical and religious subjects, consolidating Neoclassicism with Romanticism, and emphasizing the idyllic standard of beauty and perfection of the time.  But a now new breed of Impressionist painters had come along to rebel against its strict rules by illustrating a blurred and fragmented reality, focusing on the beauty of light and color in the day to day, while a young group of “Realist” painters instead focused on actual reality. Realists wanted to depict reality exactly how it was, in their paintings, not the intellectual and idyllic notions that Academic Art insisted on. One of the most notable Realist painters of the time was Rosa Bonheur, a French painter who used working class men and animals as her primary subjects.  Rosa Bonheur was one of only a few women Realist painters.  Her paintings, as well as her life, were seen as a radical statement of defiance, pushing forward human rights for the working class and for women.  Whether she intended this or not, is of course up for debate.

Rosa Bonheur was born in France in 1822. Her mother died while Rosa was still a young woman, and she was then raised by her widowed father. Her father, himself, was a painter and encouraged Rosa to follow her passions in the arts. Rosa’s father was, also for a brief time, a Saint-Simonianism. Saint-Simonianism was a political and religious movement, with roots in utopian socialism, inspired by the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon and which became the foundation for Karl Marx’s philosophical work. One of the main convictions of this movement was that women and men are equal.  This belief gave Rosa the permission and confidence to follow her passions and push past the barriers that many women faced as artists. As she grew up, Rosa made her way into the very male dominated field of Realist painting. “At a time when women's painting was considered a lady's pastime in the home, it was for her a full-time job on which her financial and psychological autonomy depended. In a period when a respectable lady would not dare venture out unchaperoned into the streets of Paris, Rosa Bonheur spent long days sketching in the countryside, at horse-fairs and even in slaughterhouses, standing in pools of blood.” Rosa was not only radical in the way she conducted her life, but in the subjects she chose to paint as well. While many women were limited to depicting domestic scenes, Rosa mainly painted working class men and animals. Very few women dared to venture out farther than the home to paint, and few men, even, had the courage to paint the working class. 

The Horse Fair, 1855, Rosa Bonehur’s most famous painting, is a prime example of how Rosa’s work can be viewed as radical for the  time. The Horse Fair depicts horses being sold by dealers in a famous Parisian horse fair. While this subject matter itself might not seem radical, the way in which she depicts the working class horses and riders is radically different than it would have normally been depicted in that era. Other paintings might choose to illustrate this scene, but would have made the wealthy buyers the main focus of the painting.  Rosa instead features the horses themselves as the subject matter. They are placed in the very center of the frame, reducing the riders to secondary subjects, and the wealthy buyers reduced further, almost as background landscape, rather than the prominent subject matter as was customary at the time. The buyers are there, but placed at the far right-side of the frame, not even properly recognizable, while the horses are front and center, depicted as the main subjects and celebrated as noble and strong.  Some of the horses are standing up on their back legs, towering over the men, so that, even though they are being sold off, they retain their own power and identity.  They are depicted as defiant and almost wild in a sense.  The white horse and one man (which some say is actually Rosa herself) are both looking straightforward, staring the viewer in the eye. This technique is used to draw the viewer directly to them. Being forced to stare straight into their eyes has the effect of elevating the enslaved animal, the working class man, and perhaps Rosa herself, to the same level as the viewers, which are primarily middle and upper class patrons. To paint the working class as a subject, in it of itself, was a radical act at the time, since prior to the Realist movement, the working class were not deemed to be suitable subjects.  But to actually place the working class and the upper class on equal and unbiased footing by making the eye levels uniform, could be analyzed as a Marxist perspective on Rosa’s part.

Another famous work by Rosa Bonehur, entitled Ploughing the Nivernais, 1849, depicts two working class men and various cows ploughing the fields. Like The Horse Fair, its main subjects are the animals themselves.  The working class men, once again, are portrayed as secondary subjects. And while The Horse Fair does depict the wealthy upper class in the far right corner, Ploughing the Nivernais features the working class men and animals exclusively. Other paintings might illustrate agricultural work, but emphasize the grueling long hours and the hard labor required.  Rosa takes a completely different approach. Instead, she depicts the working class as blissful and serene, the way in which the upper class were most often represented. Her colors are earthy and muted, making the viewer feel calm and relaxed. By putting working class men and working class animals at the forefront of both The Horse Fair and Ploughing the Nivernais, she makes them her focus. As mentioned previously, this seems to be a Marxist perspective. Because instead of focusing on the “upper class” or painting the working class in a harsher light, as per usual in that era, she chooses to portray her working class subjects in a much more honorable light. By highlighting this perspective, she could have been quietly making the case that working class men (and even animals themselves) are just as important as the upper and noble classes.  And, she makes this bold statement specifically to her middle class and upper class audiences directly.

Apart from having a socialist childhood and combating the authority of classism in her paintings by representing the working classes, she displays very few other feminist ideas in her work. In her personal life, however, Rosa always challenged the boundaries of what was allowed for women. “In the 19th century a woman could not appear in public wearing pants without being arrested. The prohibition against cross-dressing was illegal. French laws required women to obtain the written permission of the police to wear masculine attire. This would only be given with a physician's endorsement. All other women in men's clothing would be subject to arrest. Permission was difficult to obtain. Between 1850 and 1860, for example, only about a dozen women received such permits. Rosa Bonheur was one of the few with a permit.” Not only did Rosa wear pants, but as previously mentioned, she also went into areas and working places that were only designated for the working class men, like slaughterhouses. By pushing beyond the boundaries of acceptability, Rosa repeatedly demonstrated and embodied the ideology of the new feminist movement.  She not only broke boundaries for herself, but Rosa made it a point to help other women do the same. “She also made concrete attempts to further women's artistic education. From 1850 to 1860 she directed an art school for young women in Paris, emphasizing in her teaching the new roles that were opening up to women artists in industrialized societies.”    

By being a feminist herself, it can be argued that she also brought her feminist perspective into her paintings. Although she doesn’t directly feature women in either of the paintings mentioned, except, perhaps, herself in The Horse Fair, it could be deciphered that the animals in her paintings are actually symbols for, or representations of women themselves.  Women did not have the right to vote at the time and were still far from being treated as remotely equal to men. Like animals, women did not have full autonomy over their own bodies, rights or property. Rosa’s “fame in Britain also coincided with a period of impassioned public debate about animal rights and animal abuse around the issue of vivisection. The debate touched on the lives of women as well as animals and it is important for what it reveals about the way that control over the bodies of women and animals was articulated around the identifications with nature and culture, sexuality, and dominance. The same images which expose the helplessness of animals were also used to reinforce the subordinate and powerless positions of women in relation to the institutions of male power and privilege.” The tight connection between the animal and women’s rights movements is the rationale behind the argument that, in this time period, the depiction of animals could actually be understood as symbols, or stand ins, for women. If we critique the works of Rosa Bonehur through a feminist lens, as well the filter of Marxist philosophy, then a painting depicting working class men and animals as noble beings can actually be seen as marxist messaging.  Furthermore, if the animals stand in as symbols for women, then it can further be understood as a feminist message as well. By showing animals, therefore women, in this light, she is emphasizing that women are just as important as men. She could be understood as making the radial and bold statement that women are powerful and noble in and of themselves, not beneath, but equal to men, and should be recognized and celebrated as such. 

The issue of classism and sexism go hand in hand in Rosa Bonheur’s paintings and in her personal life. “In a curious way, middle-class Victorian women’s love for animals and the widespread involvement of working class men and women in the animal rights movement forged an unusual bond between the classes. The issue, however, was more far-reaching than the plight of animals. The issue was power, or rather the powerlessness that middle class women and working class men and women experienced in the face of the institutionalized authority of the middle and upper class men.” Instead of depicting working class men and women (who are instead substituted as animals) as weak and powerless in her paintings, she brings autonomy and power to both subjects. This is inherently a marxist and a feminist perspective, because she is allowing women and working class men to have the same representation as the upper classes, therefore challenging the power and authority of institutionalized classism and sexism, both through her paintings, and in her personal life as well.