BURIED TOGETHER
Partner Nathalie Micas and
Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, buried together
Queer Places:
Château de By, 11 Rue de la République, 77810 Thomery, Francia
Père Lachaise Cemetery, 16 Rue du Repos, 75020 Paris, Francia
Rosa
Bonheur, born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur, (16 March 1822 – 25 May 1899) was a
French artist, an animalière (painter of animals) and sculptor, known for
her artistic realism. Her most well-known paintings are Ploughing in
the Nivernais,[1]
first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1848, and now at Musée d’Orsay in
Paris, and The Horse Fair (in French: Le marché aux chevaux),[2]
which was exhibited at the Salon of 1853 (finished in 1855) and is now in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City. Bonheur was widely
considered to be the most famous female painter during the nineteenth
century.[3]
Frank Hird's 1904 biography of
Rosa Bonheur referred to Bonheur’s lover of several decades, Nathalie Micas,
as her “devoted friend and companion,” but he supplemented that term with
detailed accounts of Bonheur’s feelings for Micas throughout her life and
after her death, which he called a deep “blow” to Bonheur. Hird showed
that they had higher levels of involvement and intimacy than even the
closest of female friends, who rarely lived together for long periods of
time and almost never pooled their wealth or arranged to be interred
together. Theodore Stanton, the editor of Bonheur’s reminiscences, also
made clear that her tie to Micas was in effect a marital one. He cited
painter Joseph Verdier’s description of Bonheur painting “while Nathalie
Micas was taking a bath in a room opening into the studio”, and noted that
the two women merged finances, wrote wills making each the other’s primary
heir, and arranged to be buried in the same plot.
Micas was “my dearest and best friend,” or simply “my Nathalie” in
letters Bonheur sent to family, friends, and fellow artists. She assigned
Micas multiple roles, describing her as friend and guardian angel and
comparing her to a mother and wife. Bonheur’s memoirs cited many sources
that referred to the women’s “long companionship” and “deep affection,”
their reciprocal care of each other, and Nathalie’s jealousy of Bonheur’s
other relationships. The editor of those reminiscences fleshed out what he
meant by the women’s “peculiar friendship” by citing letters in which
Bonheur referred to Micas’s mother as her mother-in-law, and by devoting
an entire chapter to Micas’s family history, a treatment usually reserved
for a biographical subject’s spouse. Although Bonheur insisted “My private
life is nobody’s concern,” she also published the many letters of
condolence she received after Micas’s death in her memoirs.
Bonheur can be viewed as a "New Woman" of the 19th century; she was
known for wearing men's clothing,[18]
but she attributed her choice of trousers to their practicality for
working with animals.[19]
When Rosa Bonheur asked
Anna Klumpke to live with her, she first warmly declared her love,
then wrote to Klumpke’s mother explaining their decision to “unite [their]
existence” and assuring her that Bonheur would “arrange before a lawyer a
situation where she [Anna] will be considered as in her own home.”
Bonheur died on 25 May 1899 at the age of 77, at Thomery (By), France.[4]
Bonheur’s will explained that she was leaving all her assets to Klumpke
because she had asked her “to stay with me and share my life,” and had
therefore “decided to compensate her and protect her interests since she,
in order to live with me, sacrificed the position she had already made for
herself and shared the costs of maintaining and improving my house and
estate.” Bonheur was buried together with Nathalie
Micas, her lifelong companion at Père Lachaise
Cemetery, Paris, and later
Anna Elizabeth Klumpke joined them. Many of her paintings, which had
not previously been shown publicly, were sold at auction in Paris in 1900.[20]
One of her works, Monarchs of the Forest, sold at auction in 2008
for just over US$200,000.[21]
by Consuelo Fould (1862–1927)
With other realist 19th-century painters, Bonheur fell from fashion for
much of the 20th century, and in 1978 a critic described Ploughing in
the Nivernais 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".[22]
Since then her reputation has revived somewhat.
Bonheur is also connected with
Anne Whitney.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
My published books:
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