It’s a small château just outside the village of Thomery, in the Seine-et-Marne region, on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest. A place that had fallen into oblivion and that one woman, Katherine Brault, is working to revive: the home where Rosa Bonheur settled, lived and worked for the last 40 years of her life.
A beloved 19th-century animal painter – she is the most highly-rated and sold artist in France and internationally – Rosa Bonheur has been surprisingly forgotten. Today, she is being rediscovered as a figure of women’s emancipation and the animal cause, but also for her work, which is making its way back into major French museums.
This exploration takes us back in time, piecing together the puzzle of an extraordinary life and talent, a delightful demonstration that “genius has no sex”.