Auguste Bonheur has dared - and it is great audacity - to unvarnish nature, to take away the smoke and the dirt, to wash off the bitumen sauce with which art ordinarily covers it, and he has painted it as he sees it. His animals have the soft and satin-like skin of well-to-do animals; his foliage, the bright freshness of plants washed by the rain and dried by the sun.
- Théophile Gaultier, Abécédaire du Salon de 1861

Auguste Bonheur's depiction of animals and landscape received much positive reinforcement at the Salons, but since he was from an artistic family his career was overshadowed by his outspoken and challenging sister, Rosa Bonheur. Because of her masculine demeanor such as smoking cigarettes and frequenting butcher house...