from The Horse Fair
“Ploughing in the Nivernais,” oil on canvas, 1849
Les Deux Lapins, 1841, oil on canvas
13, rue Rumford, Paris
(Rosa Bonheur, b. 1822)
We moved again, this time
even farther out
to fields and fish ponds.
Father began to stress
direct observation
of nature, cajoling me
with the possibility of ducks,
chickens, quail , and my prefere
—from when my wet nurse sang:
Of all the rabbit’s habits,
his favorite’s eating carrots.
The softness of their layered fur
—to draw its warmth,
hundreds of tiny lines—
the shimmering eye pools,
those cleft noses and
cat-claw feet, long
satiny bladelike ears,
their magnificent teeth.
A white star dead center
of the forehead like a horse.
I spent days sketching at a farm
near Villiers on the outskirts of Paris.
To lure rabbits out of hedges—
carrots, a turnip, sometimes a parsnip.
I waited. When they did not appear,
I got hungry, eating the bait
and had to return to the farmer’s wife
to replenish, promising her a likeness
of her favorite sow, Albertina,
whose piebald spots
resembled a map of Europe.
At my easel in Pere’s atelier,
I mixed pigments, experimented
with light and dark, smoothing
colors without a trace of hard lines.
“A Caravaggio effect?”
mused Father, staring approvingly
at my portrait of deux lapins
nibbling carrots as if by candlelight;
their expressions as they regarded
the viewer, each other, the choice
of three legumes, taking measure
of the sweetness of each .
Father knit his brow, finally proclaiming,
“This is for the Salon.”
It was the first time I signed
Rosalie Bonheur and not
Father’s name or initial
in the lower right corner.
Pere framed “Rabbits Nibbling”
and a sketch of goats and sheep,
presenting them to the judges.
In the Louvre, contemporary
paintings and sculpture
in every available space
up to the ceiling.
My work was hung in a back corner
near the floor
where it was hard to see.
Father’s landscapes,
Mene’s animal sculptures,
Corot’s Northern Realism—
at first rejected by the jury,
his colors too pale—
all well-positioned.
Thousands attended,
aristocrats, Americans,
Pere’s Saint-Simonian brethren.
When the Gazette appeared
what would the verdict be?
I was nineteen. I walked on air.
The judgment was silence,
the critics said nothing,
which meant nothing to me.
Horse for Sale, 1842, oil on canvas
(Rosa Bonheur, b. 1822)
Sorrel coat ignited by daybreak,
a pleasing dish in her face, thick
sienna mane, the star of India
blazing out her forehead.
From the beginning, I loved
how her upper lip wrinkled
below her nostrils as she spoke
with a forward-and -back angling
of her lily-shaped ears.
Those eyes!
Brindled pools blinking lizard slow
whenever she heard my voice.
After winning a medal
at the Paris Salon, my work flew
off the easel. I gave Father
every franc I earned, except
the money to buy Margot.
But where to stable her?
I moved my studio
to Mme. Micas’ barn, Rue d’Assas;
room for my menagerie—
horse, sheep, black he-goat, an otter
(I was happiest in their company)—
and where Mlle. Micas--amateur
veterinaire--cared for my models.
After fitting Margot
with a man’s saddle—
tooled Moroccan leather—
I practiced swinging my leg
over her back as the neighbor,
old Mme. Foucault,*
spied on me through slats
in the wisteria-covered fence.
Imagine you are that vine,
I told myself with each attempt.
Mademoiselle held Margot
at the bit; I stood on a stump,
left foot in the stirrup, left hand grabbing
a bouquet of mane, right hand
grasping the cantle. As a child
I’d played Don Quixote
riding Rosinante, acrobatically
mounting fences and banisters,
pigs, sheep, once a dog; no one said
girls did not ride astride.
Eventually I shinnied
into the saddle with grace.
Both hands on the reins,
an imaginary string pulling
my spine and head heavenward.
Mounted, I could walk Paris
unchaperoned. Taller and stronger
than any of my sex, I could fly
with the sparrow hawks,
knife through air like a swallow.
I wore boots, a divided skirt,
a wide-brimmed boater
with a broad black band.
In long sure strides, Margot
and I marched out of the dank
melancholy of rotting cabbage
and boiling laundry, through
a comfortless fog of foundry soot
into fires of sweet gingery sunlight,
the Champs-Elysees, where
I felt thoroughly at home.
________________________
*mother of physicist Leon Foucault, best known for the Foucault Pendulum, which demonstrates the earth’s rotation.
La Mare au Diable,* Paris, 1848-9
(Rose Bonheur, b. 1822)
When she wrote about petit-Pierre
speaking to his dead mother
beside the bewitched pond—
as I speak to my dead mother
almost anywhere—when she wrote
about the souls of animals the way
I paint the souls of the animals,
Mme. Dudevant—George Sand—
read my heart.
Natalie Micas and I spoke
of little else but the latest sightings:
Madame on the Champs –Elysees
armored in trousers and frock coat.
Her lack of headgear.
Her lack of corsetry.
Her cigars!
Her arm around actress Marie Dorval.
My stepmother beetled her brow:
The Devil’s Pool, indeed.
I read George Sand’s novel
to Pere on days when he hadn’t
the breath to get out of bed:
Autumn in Nevers,
the lead ox mourns his yoke-mate
and loses the strength to plow;
Old Grey frets when Young Grey
gallops out of the village.
Madame wrote what I thought
only I could see.
My brothers helped Pere dress,
my sister taught his classes
at drawing school,
Natalie’s mother brought pots
of onion soup while
my stepmother swept,
washed, searched the ceiling
for cobwebs. And baby Germaine
—tiny, frail and kept
in a warming cabinet atop the oven—
howled relentlessly.
Not just our Rue Rumford flat
in upheaval, but all of France.
I read to Pere from La Gazette:
The soaring price of bread;
omnibuses turned into barricades
manned by jobless thousands,
some with a nom de guerre,
none with the right to vote.
On the back page tristesse:
the actress Marie Dorval est mort.
I read Pere my mail:
Breaking the largest envelope’s
government seal, white leaves drifted
peaceably over his bedsheets:
A commission from the Second Republic;
for an incredible sum, a painting
on the subject of ploughing.
Immediately I seized on
the opening of Sand’s novel,
mentally sketching a Corot landscape:
the fertile Nivernais, teams
of well-muscled Morvans,
their ploughmen and goaders.
Hide and hair and bone and horn;
a bovine eye bulges
under the strain of the pull
as ploughshares tear
red furrows as if
the fallow ground nourished
barley with spilt blood.
Natalie stretched the canvas,
together we brushed-in the sky
--a blue-y lavender memory
of my mother’s eyes.
On the wooded uphill horizon,
clouds, like sheep, peer
over the green of ancient oaks.
“Paix” the one word
this work must speak
with the mortal coil so hidden
the painting comforts.
Pere’s heart worsened,
he grabbed for breath;
mistook my brothers
for his Saint-Simonist brethren,
my slender sister for my mother,
but always he recognized me,
his Rosa.
When he died, I felt like the ox
who lost his harness-mate.
While he lived, Pere painted
my dreams; I was never
a spinster on her father’s hands;
I was his protégée.
Now, there was no one left
at home to talk to.
Our flat reeked of potato broth
and the sour breath of bad teeth
and bill collectors.
Natalie’s mother paid for Pere’s funeral,
for the harsh gray headstone
in the Bonheur plot where my mother
is not buried and where I
will not be buried.
When Ploughing the Nivernais won
a gold medal, I gave the recompense
to my family and went to live
with Natalie and Mother Soup
as a second daughter
—an act that saved my soul, but
would never be forgiven.
_____________________
*The Devil’s Pool, a novel by George Sand (Aurore Dudevant), 1846, Paris
