About This Artwork
Rosa Bonheur
French, 1822-1899
Lionc. 1880
Bronze
39.4 x 55.9 cm (15 1/2 x 22 in.)
Inscribed: Rosa B.
Bequest of Arthur Rubloff, 1988.36.9
Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture
Not on Display
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.

