Royalty at Home 1885

drawing, watercolor

naturalistic theme

drawing

impressionist landscape

watercolor

fluid art

france

surrealism

animal drawing portrait

munch-inspired

botanical art

natural environment

watercolor

warm toned green

"Royalty at Home" is a watercolor painting by Rosa Bonheur, a celebrated 19th-century French artist known for her depictions of animals. This intimate portrayal of a lion and lioness resting in a rocky landscape, captures the majestic beauty of these powerful creatures. Bonheur's meticulous attention to detail and naturalistic style, evident in the animals' fur and the surrounding flora, creates a sense of realism and immediacy in the scene. The painting, currently housed at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, is a testament to Bonheur's skill in capturing the essence of her subjects.

Comments

minneapolisinstituteofart about 1 year ago

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Rosa Bonheur depicted this lion and lioness in a rocky north African landscape, but it is more likely that she studied the animals in captivity in France. In her forthcoming book "Myth and Menagerie: Seeing Lions in the Nineteenth Century" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024), scholar Katie Hornstein proposes an identity for the two lions depicted: Sultan and Saïda, the famous lion and lioness owned by the French lion tamer François Bidel. Bidel described a work by Bonheur in his collection depicting the pair that closely resembles the present watercolor. Sultan killed a man, a railway porter, on his voyage from Africa to France in 1879, and he seriously mauled Bidel during a performance in 1886. This ended the lion's stage career and relegated his existence to a cage, albeit still on public display. Saïda died of stomach inflammation after mauling a bear in a performance, perhaps in 1883 (Hornstein 2024, 247n80). This would make the watercolor a posthumous portrait of her.