About This Artwork

Rosa Bonheur
French, 1822-1899

Lion, c. 1880

Bronze
39.4 x 55.9 cm (15 1/2 x 22 in.)
Inscribed: Rosa B.
Bequest of Arthur Rubloff, 1988.36.9

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Publication History

Regarding Rosa Bonheur's use of animals as subjects, see:

Theodore Stanton, Remininiscences of Rosa Bonheur (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1910), 342-45.

Dore Ashton, Rosa Bonheur: a life and a legend (New York: Viking, 1981), 135-39.

Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007), 177, 189-97

Regarding Rosa Bonheur's interest in lions specifically, see:

Anna Klumpke, “The Terrible Year: The Lions,” in Rosa Bonheur, The Artist’s (Auto)biography, trans. Gretchen van Slyke (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997). Originally published in French in 1908.

For more information about Rosa Bonheur's life and work, see:

Ann Sutherland Harris, ed., Women Artists, 1550-1950, (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: distributed by Random House, 1976), 223-5.

Albert Boime, "The Case of Rosa Bonheur: Why Should a Woman Want to Be Like a Man", Art History, volume 4, (1981): 384-409.

Evelyne Helbronner, “Rosa Bonheur sculpteur,” in Rosa Bonheur 1822-1899, exh. cat., ed. François Ribemont (Bordeaux: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, 1997), 113-22.

Annie-Paule Quinsac, “Rosa Bonheur: The Question of Probity in Craft,” in Rosa Bonheur: All Nature’s Children, exh. cat. (New York: Dahesh Museum, 1998), 25-49.

Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc., Collection of Isidore and Rosa Bonheur, Pierre-Jules Mêne and Other Animalier Bronzes: The Property of the Late Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge (November 29 – December 3, 1975), lot 119.

Ownership History

Arthur Rubloff (d. 1986), Chicago, by 1986; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1988.