Rosa Bonheur: The Artist's (Auto)Biography

A cigar-smoking, cross-dressing eccentric a la George Sand, Bonheur (1822-1899) was once one of the 19th century's most popular artists and the first woman to be awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Shortly before her death, Bonheur's realistic animal paintings fell out of favor, and she was largely ignored until a changing academic climate revived interest in her life. In the illuminating introduction to her translation of this 1908 biography by Bonheur's lover, van Slyke argues that Bonheur's life merits a closer look, particularly as seen through Klumpke's eyes. However, those expecting ""a bold story of lesbian love"" as the introduction suggests will be disappointed. Patient readers will be rewarded with hidden gems in Bonheur's frank voice (""Had I ever married, domestic cares would have swallowed me up, as they did my mother""), which Klumpke successfully mimics, blurring the lines between autobiography and biography. Drawing on her own meticulous journal entries as well as Bonheur's letters, sketches and diaries, Klumpke traces Bonheur's trailblazing life and recounts how she met Bonheur, fell in love and became her official portraitist, companion and sole heir. The book gets bogged down in mundane details, and art historians who want critical context are best advised to turn to Dore Ashton's 1981 Rosa Bonheur: A Life and a Legend. What Klumpke's biography does, however, is ""reveal in a sympathetic light the ways that women could and did love, live, work, and thrive among themselves in chosen retreat from a patriarchal century."" Photos. (Sept.)