“Art is a tyrant. It demands heart, brain, soul, body. The entire mess of the votary. Nothing less will win its highest favor. I wed art. It is my husband, my world, my life dream, the air I breath. I know nothing else, feel nothing else, think nothing else.” Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur, a French artist known for her realism and amazing paintings of animals, was born today, March 16, in 1822. She enjoyed great success during her lifetime and was widely considered the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century. She lived and painted and spoke out boldly:

“The point of departure must always be the vision of the truth. The eye is the routeof the souls, and the pencil or brush must sincerely and naively produce what it sees.”

“The eye—is it not the mirror of the soul in all living creatures?”

“Why shouldn’t I be proud to be a woman? My father, that enthusiastic apostle of humanity, told me again and again that it was woman’s mission to improve the human race…To this doctrine I owe my great and glorious ambition for the sex to which I proudly belong, whose independence I’ll defend till my dying day.”

“My dream is to show the fire which comes out of the horses’ nostrils; the dust which rises from their hooves. I want this to be an infernal waltz.”

“Ah! If all nations could only agree to employ their resources to perfect agriculture and improve transportation, and to bring all their girl children a good education, what an explosion of happiness there would be on earth!”

“If we don’t understand animals, they always understand us.”

“But the suit I wear is my work attire, nothing else.”

“The epithets of imbeciles have never bothered me.”

What a bright, bold, barnstorming spirit! Let’s shine as brightly as Rosa did as we all write on!

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