Martin, a terrier

Rosa Bonheur's 1879 portrait of a terrier named Martin belongs to a strand of her practice that is sometimes overshadowed by her monumental animal paintings: the intimate, affectionate study of companion animals. Having achieved international fame with The Horse Fair of 1853, Bonheur had the financial independence by the late 1870s to paint whatever engaged her curiosity, and she kept numerous dogs at her estate at By. Terriers occupied a special place in nineteenth-century French culture — they were working dogs associated with hunting and with bourgeois domesticity — and Bonheur treated Martin with the same seriousness she brought to her studies of bulls and lions. Naming the animal in the title signals a portrait rather than a generic animal study, placing the dog on an almost human footing. The work reflects Bonheur's lifelong belief that animals possessed individual character, a conviction that made her paintings resonate emotionally with a broad public well beyond specialists in animal painting.

The terrier is painted on canvas with precise attention to the texture of wiry fur, achieved through short directional brushstrokes of varying tone. Bonheur modelled the muzzle and eyes with particular care, lending the animal an alert, intelligent expression. The background is kept neutral to concentrate all visual interest on the subject.