Rosa Bonheur chose to specialize in animal paintings, thus she concentrated on animal anatomy. Her family situation was influential in other ways her father was a member of the Saint-Simonian community, a socialist faction that espoused the equality of women.
Rosa Bonheur was the daughter of an artist, Raimond Bonheur, and sister of another artist, Isidore Bonheur. As an example, Nochlin looked at Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899), a successful and accomplished French artist of the late nineteenth century “in whom all the various conflicts, all the internal and external contradictions and struggles, typical of her sex and profession, stand out in sharp relief.”Įdouard-Louis Dubufe, artist, and Oliver Pelton, engraver. With a father who was an artist, a young woman could learn about artistic materials and processes and she would have an opportunity to train as an apprentice without venturing outside the family. Almost all were daughters of artist-fathers (or, in the nineteenth century, had some close connection to an artist). Looking at the careers of the small number of women who did become artists reveals the importance of education and access. They were unlikely to gain admittance to the academies or be accepted into the circles of influence that brought awards and patronage. Nochlin pointed out that art develops through a professional system, and in the social conditions of the past, women did not have professions. Therefore, women did not have the opportunity to use a model to understand human anatomy and the postures of a figure. Drawing from the nude (especially the male nude) was an essential part of artistic training, but was an experience considered inappropriate for women. Nochlin drew attention to the types of education necessary for becoming an artist from the period of the Renaissance through the nineteenth century. Since some conditions that produced Western American art are different from those of the European past, it is illuminating to examine Nochlin’s argument and apply it to Western art. Her powerful essay influenced the way art history has been written in the subsequent decades, yet the issues raised by Nochlin have not yet been exhausted and continue to resurface. Nochlin asserted that instead of accepting the assumptions behind this question, we should examine the conditions and institutions necessary for the producing art and succeeding with it, such as study and apprenticeship. She pointed out a prevailing viewpoint-that art is a form of personal expression that comes forth from a genius, and thus she confronted the assumption, lurking behind the question, that women must not be capable of artistic greatness, or else some genius would have emerged.
In examining the question, Nochlin revealed assumptions that governed the study of art. “Indian Artifacts, Weapons and Pipes,” after 1841.
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