Minneapolis Institute of Art

Royalty at Home

Rosa Bonheur

Date

1885

Medium

Watercolor with white heightening on cream paper

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Rosa Bonheur depicted this lion and lioness in a rocky north African landscape, but it is more likely that she studied the animals in captivity in France. In her recent book Myth and Menagerie: Seeing Lions in the Nineteenth Century (2024), scholar Katie Hornstein proposes an identity for the two lions depicted: Sultan and Saïda, the famous lion and lioness owned by the French lion tamer François Bidel. Bidel described a work by Bonheur in his collection depicting the pair that closely resembles the present watercolor. Sultan killed a man, a railway porter, on his voyage from Africa to France in 1879, and he seriously mauled Bidel during a performance in 1886. This ended the lion's stage career and relegated his existence to a cage, albeit still on public display. Saïda died of stomach inflammation after mauling a bear in a performance, perhaps in 1883 (Hornstein 2024, p. 247n80). This would make the watercolor a posthumous portrait of her. Europe

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