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Bezig met laden... Art is a tyrant : the unconventional life of Rosa Bonheurdoor Catherine Hewitt
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A new biography of the wildly unconventional 19th-century animal painter and gender equality pioneer Rosa Bonheur. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)759.4The arts Painting History, geographic treatment, biography France and regionLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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And that's pretty much the story as told by Catherine Hewitt. Rosa won awards, was given medals, visited by royalty, flitting among her estates outside Paris and Nice, plus the pied-a-terre in Paris. She was wealthy, much admired, famous, entertaining Buffalo Bill Cody and a lot of equally wealthy noble socialites. After a while, it starts to read like a People magazine bio. We are told over and over again how hard she worked at her painting, but we learn very little about the art itself. There are thirteen not-particularly-high-quality color photos of paintings in the book, and five of them are portraits of Rosa herself by others. The title is referenced only in an epigram at the front of the book, and very little in the book itself makes it sound as though Bonheur actually felt that her art was a "tyrant" - it was what she did, what she wanted to do, what she chose to devote herself to, and was the happiest in doing. I am generally in absolute favor of popular biography, in readable , warm-hearted books to excite and interest and engage readers in serious subjects, but Hewitt has opted for a rather breathless tone that detracts. She has a propensity to end chapters or segments with clumsy cliff-hangers: "...just a few weeks later, France was rocked by some devastating news," "...just a few weeks later, something incredible happened," "...there was a professional surprise in store - for Rosa was about to become front-page news across the world." I started rolling my eyes. They kept rolling when Hewitt used odd verbs to presumably "punch up" quoted speech or writing: an art journal "arraigns" a critical comment; Rosa "effervesces" her pleased opinion of a visitor. And when Rosa and Nathalie spend some months traveling in France in their own, both in their late twenties, Hewitt repeatedly refers to them as "the girls."
So, I learned a lot about Rosa Bonheur, which was nice. I also very much enjoyed the incident when a rich American approached her about illustrating a stud book he was developing for breeding Percheron horses in Illinois (where I live). The gentleman's name was Dunham, and I realized that I myself had competed in horse shows on the estate owned by his family, which still houses equestrian facilities.
But overall, this starry-eyed, not-very-well-written volume is a 400+ page puff piece. For art history geeks only, and they may wish for something with a bit more meat (Bonheur apparently had few qualms about eating the animals she had been painting) to it. ( )