(Paris) An unpublished pastel by Rosa Bonheur will be auctioned in Paris on March 20 at Christie’s during the drawing fair, while this animal painter and feminist figure of the 19the century will soon be played on screen by Mélanie Laurent.
The pastel, made in 1896, after the meeting of Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) with Buffalo Bill during the Universal Exhibition of 1889, “was not known and had been in a private French collection for several generations”, a explained to AFP Hélène Rihal, director of the department of old and 19th century drawingse century at Christie’s Paris.
It was “initially acquired by a collector, Albert Soubise, lawyer, music critic and author from the end of the 19th centurye century, contemporary with Rosa Bonheur, then transmitted to her descendants,” explained the expert.
94 cm long (by 57 cm wide, Editor’s note) and entitled Study for Bison Emigrationit is “probably the largest drawing we know of her, estimated between 100,000 and 150,000 euros ($147,000 and $220,000),” according to Mme Rihal.
It could well be of interest to museums, “increasingly inclined to purchase works by women artists, particularly in the United States,” according to her.
In 2019, a painting by Rosa Bonheur also representing bison was sold at auction for $700,000 by the American house Coeur d’Alene Art Auction in Idaho, adds the specialist.
In 2022, a retrospective at the Musée des Beaux-arts in Bordeaux and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris brought the artist out of the oblivion into which she had fallen after having probably been the most famous and most famous female painter. sold in its century, as much in France as in England and the United States, according to specialists.
Rosa Bonheur, better known for the Parisian cafes that bear her name and as a homosexual icon than for her painting before this retrospective, spent the last 40 years of her life at the Château de By in Thomery, in Seine-et-Marne, 30 of which with his childhood friend Nathalie Micas, also a painter who died in 1889.
A biopic directed by the French writer and director Fabienne Berthaud where the painter must be played by the actress Mélanie Laurent is announced for 2025.