Springtime in Art

It’s spring! And here, in our magazine, we celebrate spring with art, of course.

We have chosen these beautiful paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and by the French painter Rosa Bonheur (1822 – 1899) to visualize one of the most important parts of spring: new life!

Van Gogh needs no introduction, but Rosa Bonheur probably does: even though she was the richest and most famous female artist in 19th century France, like many female artists, she was quickly forgotten after her death. The Musée d’Orsay in Paris made up for this with a big retrospective in 2022/23 to mark the bicentennial of her birth. Bonheur specialized in painting animals and openly defied the gender expectations of her time: she wore short hair, smoked, rode not in a sidesaddle but like a man and received a “cross dressing permit” by the police so that she could wear trousers while visiting all-male spaces such as slaughterhouses and animal fairs to study animal anatomy. She lived for four decades with Nathalie Micas, a female childhood friend and fellow artist, writing that she would have married Micas if she had been a man.

Vincent van Gogh, Field with Two Rabbits, 1889. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. WikiArt.

Rosa Bonheur, Head of a Lamb. WikiArt.

Vincent Van Gogh, Still Life with Three Birds Nests, 1885. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands. WikiArt.