Lion

CC0 Public Domain Designation

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

c. 1880

Rosa Bonheur
French, 1822-1899

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Rosa Bonheur
Title: Lion
Origin: France
Date: 1875–1885
Medium: Bronze
Inscriptions: Inscribed: Rosa B.
Dimensions: 39.4 × 55.9 cm (15 1/2 × 22 in.)
Credit Line: Bequest of Arthur Rubloff
Reference Number: 1988.36.9
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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.

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

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