Ploughing in the Nivernais

File:Charolais cattle, Sierra Nevada, Venezuela.jpg

The Nivernais, the area around Nevers, was known for its Charolais cattle, which were to play an important role in the agricultural revolution that took place in the area in the nineteenth century.Shaffer 129-44. Rosa Bonheur gained a reputation painting animals, and Ploughing in the Nivernais features twelve Charolais oxen, in two groups of six. On a sunny autumn day they plough the land; this is the sombrage, the first stage of soil preparation in the fall, which opens up the soil to aeration during the winter. Humans play a minor role in the paintingHarris 198.—the farmer is almost completely hidden behind his animals. The freshly-ploughed land is prominent in the foreground, and the landscape behind is basking in sunlight.{{Cite web|url=http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/oeuvres-commentees/recherche/commentaire/commentaire_id/labourage-nivernais-31.html|title=Rosa Bonheur: Labourage nivernais|publisher=Musée d'Orsay|access-date=2015-01-26|archive-date=2019-04-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190404021133/https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/oeuvres-commentees/recherche/commentaire/commentaire_id/labourage-nivernais-31.html|url-status=dead}} The painting's clarity and light resembles that of the Dutch paintings (esp. by Paulus Potter) which Bonheur had studied as part of her education.{{cite web|url=http://ringlingdocents.org/pages/bonheur.htm|title=Rosa Bonheur: French, 1822–1899; Ploughing in Nivernais, 1850|publisher=John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art|accessdate=27 January 2015}}

According to Albert Boime, the painting should be seen as a glorification of peasant life and its ancient traditions; he places it in the context of the revolutionary year 1848, when cities were the scene of chaos and strife.Boime 622.

Rosa Bonheur made the painting by commission of the French governmentCachin 331. for 3000 francs; it was shown in the Salon in 1849,Hird 67. where it won her a First Medal.Vizetelly 237. N. D'Anvers repeats an apparently well-known story, that it was inspired by the opening scene of George Sand's novel La Mare au Diable (1846), which features oxen ploughing a landscape with the author's commentary, "a noble subject for a painter".{{cite web |title=Bonheur, (Marie-)Rosa [Rosalie] |author=Heather McPherson |date=2003 |website=Grove Art Online |doi=10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T009871 |url=http://www.groveart.com/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000009871 |url-status= |quote=Typical of the Realist interest in rural society manifested in the contemporary works of Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet, Ploughing was inspired by George Sand's rustic novel La Mare au diable (1846). }}{{deadlink|date=September 2023}} The comparison with Sand is amplified in an article in the July 1899 edition of The Literary Digest, which referred to the painting as a "pictorial translation of the novel".{{cite news|title=Rosa Bonheur|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XHNAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA10|date=1 July 1899|newspaper=The Literary Digest|pages=9–10}} Initially intended for the museum in Lyon, it was instead exhibited in the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris and was a featured exhibit at the 1889 World Fair.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/04/style/04iht-rosa.t.html|title=The Rise and Fall of Rosa Bonheur|first=Mary|last=Blume|date=4 October 1997|newspaper=The New York Times|accessdate=26 January 2015}} The painting was moved to the Louvre and afterward to the Musée d'Orsay. She made a number of copies, one of which is in the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

File:Boeufs allant au labour-Constant Troyon-IMG 8342.JPG, Boeufs allant au labour, effet de matin ("Oxen going to work, effect of morning"), 1855, Musée d'Orsay.]]

Rosa Bonheur was claimed by New York Times critic Mary Blume as "the most famous woman painter of her time, perhaps of all time". Besides The Horse Fair,{{cite journal|last=Spiridion|year=1857|title=Studies among the Leaves|journal=The Crayon|volume=4|issue=2|pages=59–64|doi=10.2307/25527539 |jstor=25527539}} Ploughing in the Nivernais is one of Bonheur's best-known paintings,{{cite journal|last=A. B.|year=1997|title=Rev. of Jean-Louis Balleret, De Corot à Balthus. Un siècle de grands peintres dans la Nièvre et le Morvan|journal=La Revue administrative|volume=50|issue=300|page=721|jstor=40771052}} and somewhat resembles Oxen going to work by Constant Troyon. An early admirer was Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, who copied the work in the Luxembourg before beginning a long acquaintance with the artist.Waters 197; {{cite news|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jFs_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA340|title=Letters and Art: Anna Klumpke|work=Public Opinion|volume=29|issue=11|year=1900|page=340|accessdate=26 January 2015}} George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby mentions such a scene, of people copying Ploughing in the Nivernais and other works in the Luxembourg.Du Maurier 308. It is one of the paintings singled out by Margaret Addison on her European tour in 1900,Addison 23. though philosopher Frédéric Paulhan in L'Esthétique du paysage (1913) was less impressed; Paulhan argued that good art simplifies, and that Ploughing in the Nivernais does not do so, spoiling it with the execution of the clods of earth.{{cite journal|last=Lalande|first=A.|year=1915|title=Philosophy in France, 1913–1914|journal=The Philosophical Review|volume=24 |issue=3 |pages=245–69|doi=10.2307/2178332 |jstor=2178332}} Those clods and the greenery were done, according to Bonheur, in a "heartwarming" way, according to Paulhan; she did not create, but merely reproduced, since on the one hand she was too complete by providing too much insignificant detail, and on the other hand she weakened nature by reproducing it."On peut voir au Luxembourg un grand et célèbre tableau de Rosa Bonheur, le Labourage nivernais, où les mottes de terre détachées par la charrue, avec les herbes qui poussaient sur elles, sont rendues avec un soin attendrissant...Rosa Bonheur na pas vraiment créé. Elle a à la fois trop minutieusement et trop incomplètement reproduit. Trop minutieusement, car elle nous donne beaucoup de détails sans signification: trop incomplètement, car elle n'a fait qu'affaiblir la nature en la reproduisant": Paulhan 67. Paul Cézanne was also unimpressed, commenting that "it is horribly like the real thing".

In 1978 a critic described the work as "entirely forgotten and rarely dragged out from oblivion"; that year it was part of a series of paintings sent to China by the French government for an exhibition titled "The French Landscape and Peasant, 1820–1905".{{cite journal|last=Muratova|first=Xenia|year=1978|title=Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions: Paris and China|journal=The Burlington Magazine|volume=120|issue=901|pages=257–60|jstor=879183}} Mary Blume, in 1997, said "the work [Horse Fair as well as Ploughing] is more careful than inspired, affectionate but not sentimental, a doughty celebration of working animals".

• France profonde

{{Reflist|30em}}

• {{cite book|last=Addison|first=Margaret|editor=Jean O'Grady|title=Diary of a European Tour, 1900|url=https://archive.org/details/diaryofeuropeant0000addi|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/diaryofeuropeant0000addi/page/23 23]|year=1999|publisher=McGill-Queen's Press|isbn=9780773568006}}
• {{cite book|last=D'Anvers|first=N.|title=Representative Painters of the XIXth Century|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sEFAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA91|year=1899|publisher=Sampson Low, Marston and Co.|location=London|pages=90–92|chapter=Marie Rosalie Bonheur}}
• {{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sEb4RL2Ru1kC |first=Albert|last=Boime|authorlink=Albert Boime|title=Art in an Age of Civil Struggle, 1848–1871|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=2008|isbn=9780226063423 }}
• {{cite book|last=Cachin|first=Francoise|editor=Pierre Nora|title=Rethinking France: Les Lieux de Mémoire|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4aZaOuXLjtYC&pg=PA466|volume=2|year=2006|publisher=U of Chicago P|isbn=9780226591339|pages=295–342|chapter=The Painter's Landscape}}
• {{cite book|last=Harris|first=Jonathan|title=The New Art History: A Critical Introduction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=meB4Pkqt8DUC&pg=PT198|year=2002|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781134582501}}
• {{cite book|last=Hird|first=Frank|title=Rosa Bonheur|url=https://archive.org/details/rosabonheur00hird|page=[https://archive.org/details/rosabonheur00hird/page/67 67]|year=1904|publisher=G. Bell & Sons}}
• {{cite book|last=Keith|first=Claire|title=The Environment in French and Francophone Literature and Film|series=French Literature Series|volume=39|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OUAjAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA72|year=2012|editor1-last=Persels|editor1-first=Jeff|publisher=Rodopi|isbn=9789401208840|pages=69–86|chapter=Pilgrims in a Toxic Land: Writing the Trenches of the French Great War}}
• {{cite book|last=Maurier|first=George Du|title=Trilby: A Novel|url=https://archive.org/details/trilbynovel00dumaiala|page=[https://archive.org/details/trilbynovel00dumaiala/page/308 308]|year=1922|publisher=Harper}}
• {{cite book|last=Shaffer|first=John W.|title=Family and Farm: Agrarian Change and Household Organization in the Loire Valley, 1500–1900|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x1F33xX0W1kC&pg=PA143|year=1982|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=9780873955621|pages=129–44|chapter=Agricultural revolution in the Nivernais}}
• {{cite book|title=L'Esthétique du paysage|language=French|last=Paulhan|first=Frédéric |authorlink=Frédéric Paulhan|year=1913|publisher=Felix Algan|location=Paris|url=https://archive.org/stream/lesthtiquedupa00paul/lesthtiquedupa00paul_djvu.txt}}
• {{cite book|last=Vizetelly|first=Ernest Alfred|title=Paris and Her People Under the Third Republic|url=https://archive.org/details/parisandherpeop00vizegoog|page=[https://archive.org/details/parisandherpeop00vizegoog/page/n255 237]|year=1919|publisher=F.A. Stokes}}
• {{cite book|last=Waters|first=Clara Erskine Clement|authorlink=Clara Erskine Clement|title=Women in the fine arts: from the seventh century B.C. to the twentieth century A.D.|url=https://archive.org/details/womeninfinearts00clemgoog|page=[https://archive.org/details/womeninfinearts00clemgoog/page/n285 197]|accessdate=26 January 2015|year=1904|publisher=Houghton, Mifflin and Company}}

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Category:1849 paintings

Category:Paintings by Rosa Bonheur

Category:Cattle in art

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