Art is a Tyrant: The Unconventional Life of Rosa Bonheur

Art is a Tyrant: The Unconventional Life of Rosa Bonheur by Hewitt, Catherine. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781785786211.

WINNER OF THE FRANCO-BRITISH SOCIETY LITERARY AWARD 2020 Art is a Tyrant recounts [Bonheurs] life with no little brio. Michael Prodger, The Times Books of the Year 2020 [A] diligently researched, beautifully produced and insistently sympathetic biography. Kathryn Hughes, Guardian A new biography of the wildly unconventional 19th-century animal painter and gender equality pioneer Rosa Bonheur, from the author of the acclaimed Mistress of Paris and Renoirs Dancer. Rosa Bonheur was the very antithesis of the feminine ideal of 19th-century society. She was educated, she shunned traditional womanly pursuits, she rejected marriage - and she wore trousers. But the society whose rules she spurned accepted her as one of their own, because of her genius for painting animals. She shared an intimate relationship with the eccentric, self-styled inventor Nathalie Micas, who nurtured the artist like a wife. Together Rosa, Nathalie and Nathalies mother bought a chateau and with Rosas menagerie of animals the trio became one of the most extraordinary households of the day. Catherine Hewitts compelling new biography is an inspiring evocation of a life lived against the rules.