sweasel.com

She was an old dike? and a woman? and English?!

They had plural beings back in the 1800s?!
I suppose she didn’t also think she was a (pick a color) dragonkin though since World of Warcraft hadn’t been invented yet.

Hm,and here I thought dikes were mainly found in Holland.
Always something else about Europe I’m discovering.
Damn, I learn new stuff all the time around here!

Fine artist too (no shortage of her work, or pictures of her, on Google).
Here’s a self portrait, nae trews though
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Bonheur#/media/File:Rosa_Bonheur_-_The_Highland_Shepherd.jpg

She even did a portrait of old Buffalo Bill (when he wasn’t old).

Wow! Rosa was a prolific painter. I found an original painting on eBay for $1450, and lots of prints, some of them signed. They are very beautiful. I suspect she like animals better than people. I wonder if she ever painted one of those Scottish wild cats.

Animalière. I like it. As in “Mme. Weasel, the famous animalière, noted for her exquisite chickens … .”

Ah nee mal yar—if you are from Texas 😉 .

There’s a painting she did of some kind of European wild cat. Here. Toward the end of her life, she took in lions on the grounds of her estate, but I don’t think her lion paintings are that great…she got the faces wrong, somehow.

No kidding, this is my favorite Rosa Bonheur painting, and I can’t find a larger version of it.

Oh! For Christmas, Uncle B got me a cushion imprinted with her most famous painting. (Or maybe the horse fair is her most famous).

Wow, that horse fair painting is excellent. She captures the motion and barely controlled chaos so well that you can almost hear the horses. I like!

I have been to the Musee d’Orsay, where the oxen painting is located, but I was so focused on Manet’s Olympia that only Degas’ Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer (I think that’s the name of it – the little statue wearing a skirt) still sticks in my memory as well.

I understand why Ploughing in the Nivernais is so popular, though I didn’t see it at first. It’s perfect; I swear I thought it was an old photograph. I’d love to see the original. And so big; it must have taken her a long time to paint it.

Regarding your favorite Study of a Cow, Stoaty—please tell us what you see that we (I) don’t see. Is it her bony backside, or is it the technique?

I liked the wild cat very much. I might have to buy a print.

Why settle for being a mere animalière?

Be the first chickenière! No, that probably should be something like pouletière… anyway you probably wouldn’t be terribly insulted if the Frogs wrote about you in English.

In France, this blog would be “La Belette”. Or maybe “La Fouine”. Feminine for some reason known only to the French.

For the same reason “wife” in french is sometimes masculine?

“My wife, he is a good cook” was always good for a laugh after the old ones had consumed half a gallon of whiskey and started literally translating.

Deborah, I think it’s because the contours of the cow are almost entirely indicated by the ins and outs of her splotchy hide, if that makes sense.

I’m trying to paint a chicken at the moment, where the shape of the chicken is mostly rendered by the shifting size and shape of her speckledy feathers.

It’s not turning out so good, but I love the idea.