Fenaison en Auvergne

By 1855 Rosa Bonheur was the most successful woman painter in Europe, and to gather the studies for a canvas like this she carried a permit from the Paris police that let her wear trousers in public so she could work at cattle markets and farms without being mobbed. This is haymaking in the Auvergne, in central France, oxen hauling the load up a slope under a wide summer sky, more than four metres across. It hung at the Exposition Universelle in Paris that year, where it won a gold medal, and the animals get the same close attention she gave the people. The oxen are individuals, muscled and patient, the harvest almost incidental behind them.