Rosa Bonheur (French, 1822-1899)
Oil on cradled panel, 12 3/4 x18 in 1865
Oil on cradled panel, 12 3/4 x
Sheep by the Sea is based on Rosa Bonheur''''s travels through the Scottish Highlands in the summer of 1855. In painting this complacent flock of sheep settled in a meadow near a body of water, Bonheur has captured the placidity of the moment. The thickly applied, textured paint conveys the lushness of this verdant landscape at the water''''s edge. Sheep by the Sea demonstrates the artist''''s commitment to direct observation from nature; the informality of this rustic scene belies the detailed physiognomic studies of animals that Bonheur frequently sketched before executing a work in oil paint.
The empress of France commissioned Sheep by the Sea, although it was exhibited at the Salon of 1867 before it entered the empress''''s collection. The empress (like her contemporary, Queen Victoria) also patronized the renowned British artist Sir Edwin Landseer, whose sentimentalized paintings of domestic animals became popular among the upper classes in England and France. Yet, unlike Landseer''''s animals, which overtly play out and convey human dramas, Bonheur depicted animals within their natural habitat, not subjected to human laws and emotions.
Because many of her works are ostensibly straightforward depictions of the animal kingdom, historically they have invited a wide variety of interpretations. The English writer and artist John Ruskin criticized Bonheur for "shrinking" from the challenge of painting the human face. Others have taken the position that she created paintings of animals as "metaphors for the human predicament." More recent scholarship has asserted that Bonheur found a means of expressing her own personal frustrations with social convention by painting animals free of such constraints, subject to and guided only by the laws of nature.