Plowing in the Nivernais
One of Rosa Bonheur's first great successes was Plowing in Nivernais (1848), which represents, in an extremely realistic way, a group of oxen that pull the plow, together with the farmers. The painting was commissioned by the French government and won the gold medal of Salon in 1849.
A French critic Théophile Thoré wrote about this painting: "Mademoiselle Rosa paints almost like a man." It is a motif that lived through the history of art. When a man wanted to praise a woman artist, he told a phrase like that, implying that a woman art was inferior, and a good woman artist was an exception.
The painting is extremely realistic. Bonheur accurately painted the anatomy of animals, and of men, to the point of making them look fatigued: the poses show all the sacrifices necessary to tame a heavy matter of the earth. The hooves and the feet sink into the ground. The perspective chosen by the artist makes the whole scene not the banal representation of the work of the fields, but a subject that is both realistic and epic. The tense muscles, the size of the animals, the expressions, the dark skin of the peasants: everything contributes to it. The humble sense of realism that emanates from the canvas recalls the work of Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet. Similar to the Realists, Bonheur presents man and nature working seamlessly together to yield harvest from the land.
