The Museum · the collection
The Horse Fair
Rosa Bonheur, 1852–55. Paris, France.
Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.
Horses are being shown to buyers at a market in Paris. They rear, plunge and wheel in a great moving circle, with the handlers struggling to hold them. Big, powerful grays and dark bays fill the canvas at almost life size. Rosa Bonheur was the most celebrated painter of animals of her day, and one of the most successful women artists of the nineteenth century. She studied horses for many months to get this right, sketching at the market and in stables. Every muscle and every tossed mane is observed. The dust rises, the trees stand calm behind, and the whole scene thunders past from left to right.
Look closely
- Find the white horse that is rearing highest.
- Follow the movement of the procession. Which way is it going?
- Look at the handlers. Which one has the hardest job?
While you sit
The horses are thundering past. Sit at the edge of the fair and let them go by.
Your seat in the galleries: a stout oak bench with a saddle-leather seat.
About the work
- Title
- The Horse Fair
- Artist
- Rosa Bonheur
- Date
- 1852–55
- From
- Paris, France
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 96 1/4 x 199 1/2 in. (244.5 x 506.7 cm)
- Rights
- Public domain
- Image
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
- Record
- The museum's page for this work
The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.
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