Rosa Bonheur was a French painter, born in Bordeaux in 1822, who died in 1899 and made her name painting animals. Her enormous canvas The Horse Fair toured Britain and the United States, and in 1865 she became the first woman artist to receive the Legion of Honor. People remember her just as much for her trousers. To wear them in Paris, she needed a permit from the police.
The permit had to be renewed every six months. The state that demanded that paperwork also gave her the Legion of Honor, at her own château.
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On 10 June 1865, Empress Eugénie came to Bonheur's château at By, near Fontainebleau, to give her the Legion of Honor in person. Napoleon III was returning from Algeria and Eugénie ruled as regent. She wanted the last act of her regency to prove that genius has no sex. Bonheur was in the garden, in her working clothes, and had only moments to change.
She knelt on one knee. The empress pinned the cross to her chest and said, "Enfin, vous voilà chevalier." The decree had been signed two days earlier, by Eugénie herself, in her husband's name.
Yet the clothes Bonheur hurried out of were legal only on paper. A woman in trousers needed an exemption from the Paris police, backed by a medical certificate. The painter the empire made a knight was, for its police, a patient.
What You'll Discover
Where a girl learned anatomy.
What made The Horse Fair a sensation.
What lived in her garden.
Whom she invited to her château.
Who shared her grave.
Why France forgot her.