Rosa Bonheur (French, 1822-1899)


The call of the stag signed 'Rosa Bonheur' (lower left)pastel on grey paper48 x 64cm (18 7/8 x 25 3/16in).
|We are grateful to Professor Dott. Annie-Paule Quinsac for confirming the attribution to Rosa Bonheur and for her assistance in cataloguing this lot. Provenance(Probably) Arthur Tooth and Sons Ltd., London.Adolph Streuli (1868-1953) Collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above April 1932).Thence by descent.Although undated, the present lot belongs to the last decade of the Rosa Bonheur's life, when she developed a greater sensibility to nature as landscape, and as a result often returned to the medium of pastel. The ductility of pastel allowed Bonheur to work with a wide spectrum of intense colour, creating dramatic, luminous effects. It is winter, at dusk. The last quarter of the moon is visible as a slim white crescent to the left. A large stag stands proudly looking over the landscape, everything momentarily frozen in time. The colour contrasts convey an almost magical feeling, and Bonheur has captured the sensation of bitter cold that permeates the landscape in winter. Stags, roebucks, bucks, does and their fawns were for Bonheur the last denizens of a nature uncontaminated by man, and she feared modernity would slowly eradicate them. It is to capture them in their element that compelled Bonheur in later life to develop a vision of nature close to that of the Romantics, or at least far less naturalist than her previous works. Forest animals were a recurring theme in Bonheur's oeuvre and the present lot, similar to The King of the forest (sold Christie's, New York, 23 May 2017, lot 24) is an important re-discovery, expressing in the same vibrant way, a sacred union between landscape and the untamed animal as Bonheur understood it.