Rosa Bonheur

Rosalie known as Rosa. An artist. A pragmatic idealist, a conventional outsider, but above all a painter of agricultural and wild life at a time when the industrial revolution and urban growth are wiping out whole sections of the age-old relationship between men and animals.

A feminist too. In a century that considers women as minors or incapable of rights and abilities, subjugating them to a father, a brother or a husband, forbidding them access to knowledge and all forms of power, Rosa Bonheur vows to "raise the woman". Abandoned by her father, having seen her mother kill herself, she refuses to marry and lives all her life with women.

This was enough to shock more than one right-thinking person. On the contrary, she was honored, respected, decorated, as if protected by a magical name. First artist to receive the cross of the Legion of Honor and first woman to receive the rosette thanks to the president of the Republic Sadi Carnot, she obtains from the chief of police a special permit to dress as a man.

As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the most famous female painter of the 19th century, who installed a menagerie in the garden of her castle in Seine et Marne, including a lioness in freedom, the film proposes to rediscover an artist somewhat forgotten in the country where she was born and yet celebrated in the United States and England as a major artist.

Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), a lifetime of eccentricity and freedom.

Director: Gregory Monro

Author: Gregory Monro

Executive Producer: O2B Films

Co-production: Musée d’Orsay

Broadcaster: France 5

Release year: 2022

Running time: 60 minutes

International sales: ARTE Distribution