Rosa Bonheur and the Horse
From 12 September 2026
to 3 January 2027
Musée Condé – Château de Chantilly
60500 Chantilly
The Château de Chantilly pays tribute to Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), the great nineteenth-century animal painter for whom the horse was a favourite subject.
A meeting between a place and an artist
Highly regarded by the Duke of Aumale, who commissioned a painting from her, Rosa Bonheur visited the Château de Chantilly several times. Passionate about horses, it is only natural that France’s largest museum dedicated to this animal should pay tribute to her: at the Château de Chantilly, whose spirit is intimately bound to equestrian art, her work finds a powerful and natural echo.
Although Rosa Bonheur painted a wide variety of animals, horses seem to have held a special place in her heart, as evidenced by the resounding success of her famous painting The Horse Fair (1853). She studied her subjects rigorously, both in their natural environment and at horse fairs, depicting them with a mastery of form and movement rarely seen before. A horse owner herself, she drew inspiration from her own mounts, which became the muses for many of her paintings.
Rosa Bonheur, an artist freed
from the constraints of her time
Held in two parts – at the Musée Condé’s cabinet of graphic arts and at the Musée Vivant du Cheval, in the Grandes Écuries – the exhibition brings together drawings, paintings, photographs and archives. More than a phenomenally successful painter, Rosa Bonheur was a pioneer, a woman freed from the roles and subjects traditionally assigned to women of her era.
Exhibition “Rosa Bonheur and the Horse”
From 12 September 2026 to 3 January 2027
Musée Condé – Château de Chantilly
Prince Amyn Aga Khan cabinet of graphic arts
and Musée Vivant du Cheval –
60500 Chantilly, France
