Time for another small moment of brightness, which is to say another #QueerHistoryMonday. Today, in honour of #LesbianVisibilityWeek, let's talk about Rosa Bonheur - aged 41 and looking ludicrously handsome in the picture below:

Bonheur was born in Bordeaux in 1822 into an artistic family. Her family were fairly radical in their egalitarian beliefs, and strongly encouraged her education - Bonheur made her first Paris Salon exhibition at the age of 19 (?!). She was an "animalier"...

...a specialist in depicting animals; her artistic training involved involved not only the study of the great artists and living animals, but anatomical dissection and work in the abattoirs of Paris. Her work was HUGELY popular, and made her a (rough estimate) fuckton of money.

If you want to see her works now, you can check them out (after lockdown) at The Met and the Musée d'Orsay.
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/labourage-nivernais-31.html?no_cache=1

And a short intro from the National Gallery here:

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/rosa-bonheur

But I have to be honest - I don't so much love Bonheur for her paintings (as amazing as they are), as for the fact that she lived openly with her romantic companion, Nathalie Micas, for forty years, got legal permission to wear men's clothes, and...

...publicly and proudly availed herself of all the well-known sapphic/lesbian/tribadic signifiers of the day: chopping her hair short, smoking openly, refusing male interest and centrality, and (so it seems) doing whatever the fuck she wanted.

Here's Rosa and Nathalie together in 1882:

She famously (apocryphally? Bonheur historians, let me know?) declared: 'As far as males go, I only like the bulls I paint.'

Nathalie died in 1889 - after her death, Bonheur entered into another romantic relationship, this time with fellow painter Anne Klumpke.

Klumpke survived Bonheur as her sole heir and, in 1908, published a biography of Bonheur, which detailed how they fell in love. Nathalie, Anna, and Rosa are all buried together in the Père Lachaise Cemetary in Paris. Their lives are testament...

...to the far greater visibility of queer lives in the past than we today, in the present, usually imagine - and to the talent, courage, and grit of 19th century women, all too often portrayed as nothing but passive non-entities. Here's Bonheur in 1889:

Final bonus points: Bonheur was so popular, she was turned into a doll. Really. https://hyperallergic.com/433726/frida-kahlo-barbie-rosa-bonheur-doll/

That's it for this week's #QueerHistoryMonday - blame for any typos goes on the painkillers.

As you may have guessed, my current research projects are all about Paris and London. If you're an historian with some cool queer history from elsewhere around the world, and would like me to share it here, just let me know? Otherwise same time next week for the next instalment.