Two horses for a cart 1852

Rosa Bonheur painted these two horses for a cart in 1852, using the traditional artist’s materials of oil paint on canvas. The artist’s focus on the animals’ musculature, the texture of their coats, and the weight they bear to pull the heavy cart really stands out. Bonheur was known for her exceptional skill in animal painting, developed through direct observation at farms, veterinary schools, and horse fairs. Her knowledge of equine anatomy is apparent in the lifelike realism of the horses, but she was also very aware of the social context of her subjects, the economic reliance on beasts of burden like these. Bonheur’s work challenged the established art world, which at the time favored history painting, portraits, and landscapes. She took the everyday scene of working animals and presented them on a grand scale, with the attention to detail and composition usually reserved for more prestigious subjects. Bonheur brought the kind of representational craft expected of genre painting into the fine arts.