Isidore-Jules Bonheur 1827-1901 A standing bull

Isidore Bonheur was born at Bordeaux, the third child of Raymond Bonheur and the brother of Rosa Bonheur. Like the other members of his family, he showed great aptitude for drawing and modelling from an early age and was taught by his father. In 1849 he enrolled at the École des Beaux Arts, although he had made his Salon début the previous year with a painting entitled African Horseman Attacked by a Lion and a plaster model of the same subject. He exhibited regularly at the Salon and at the Royal Academy from 1875-76 and he won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1889. Though a prolific painter of animal subjects and landscapes, his sculpture is better known. His best known works include the memorial to his sister Rosa Bonheur at Fontainebleau and the pair of stone lions on the steps of the Palais de Justice, Paris.

The majesty and strength of bulls appealed to Bonheur and he exhibited no less than ten models of cattle at the Salon. The plaster for this subject was exhibited at the Salon of 1865 and formed one of a pair ordered for the Sultan Abdul-Aziz's palace in Constantinople. An example of this model is in the Victoria & Albert Museum. A pair of life-size bronze bulls, standing on marble bases, can be seen at the entrance to Colt State Park, Rhode Island, USA.