Historical / contextual reference

Photograph of the specific selected museum object; identity checked by object ID and accession.

Credit: Rosa Bonheur / The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1887
Rights: Public domain; Met Open Access

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Horses and handlers move through a broad market scene in which animal bodies dominate the action. The Metropolitan Museum locates the subject on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital in Paris and records Bonheur's repeated visits to sketch there. The painting combines those observations with an ambitious compositional scale and references to earlier art. Bonheur presented it at the Salon in 1853 and later retouched it, which explains the extended dating. For a culture archive, the work preserves more than the appearance of horses. It brings the trade in working animals, the physical labour of handling them and a painter's sustained study into view, while demonstrating that a familiar urban activity could become the subject of monumental painting.

Why preserve it: Curatorial interpretation: It connects animal observation and ordinary commerce with an artist's claim to ambitious public painting.

Keep in mind: This is Met 87.25, not a smaller later version. The painting is composed from study, not a photograph of a single market moment.