Study for The Horse Fair

Rosa Bonheur · c. 1850

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

43.2 × 87 cm (17 × 34 1/2 in.); Framed: 69.3 × 111.8 × 10.2 cm (27 1/4 × 44 × 4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Romanticism

Charged with movement and muscular energy, this preparatory study captures the swirling chaos of the Paris horse market with an immediacy that rivals the finished masterwork it preceded. Rosa Bonheur was among the most celebrated animal painters of the nineteenth century, earning recognition across Europe at a time when the fine arts largely excluded women from serious professional standing. Her approach to painting animals was grounded in direct, sustained observation — she kept a private menagerie and spent years studying horses in motion, anatomy, and temperament. In this study, that deep familiarity is evident in every brushstroke: the tension in haunches, the flare of a nostril, the way handlers lean into the pull of restless animals. To sketch at the Parisian horse fairs, Bonheur obtained a police permit to wear men's clothing — a widely documented practice she renewed regularly to move freely through the working-class crowds without drawing attention. The finished Horse Fair became one of the most famous paintings of its era. This study, held in the Art Institute of Chicago, offers something more intimate: the artist thinking through the problem in real time, before the scale and spectacle took over. A hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas preserves that directness — the layered paint, the loose confident marks, the sense of controlled urgency that no print can fully convey.