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ROSA BONHEUR FRENCH, 1822-99 THE DEER, MORNING EFFECT (LES CERFS, EFFET DU MATIN) signed and dated Rosa Bonheur 1897 (lower left) pastel on canvas 59 1/4 by 75 3/4 in. 150.5 by 192.4cm. Born the daughter of well-known sculptor Isidore Bonheur, Rosa Bonheur spent her teenage years copying the great masters in the Louvre and convincing her father that she had a promising future as an artist. By the age of nineteen, she was already exhibiting in the Paris Salon and won the coveted first prize medal just after turning twenty-six. Commercially and critically successful, Bonheur was best known and celebrated for her large-scale scenes of animals in nature. The monumental size of her works, often depicting rearing horses and exotic animalia, drew comparisons to Delacroix and other Romantics, while her scenes of laborers and forests aligned her with Barbizon painters such as Millet and Troyon. Deer in the Forest is a beautiful example of Bonheur's best work. The painting combines the grand scale that characterized her most prized paintings with the more personal, intimate feel of the most successful Barbizon artists. In this work, Bonheur incorporates a brilliant range of color in a medium that allows for an ethereal, atmospheric quality, as if the viewer is catching the deer by surprise at the first hint of dawn. Reviewing Bonheur's entry to the Paris Salon of 1899 for L'Elair, Leon Roger-Miles wrote, "Her animal's eyes have just the right expression. Rosa Bonheur seems to have stolen their secret in her silent conversations with them, rather her half century of painstaking, curious, and tireless study" (Anna Klumpke, Rosa Bonheur, Michigan, 1997 p. 236). LITERATURE Anne Klumpke, Rosa Bonheur, Michigan, 1997, p. 281.