Highland Raid
In 1855, Rosa Bonheur went to Scotland to meet Queen Victoria who loved animal painting. There, the artist did several sketches; some of them she developed later into paintings with Scottish themes, Highland Raid among them. The subject was anachronistic, as the Scots were not doing cattle raids in the 1850s and 1860s; this practice was dropped a hundred years before. But the subject gave Bonheur an excellent opportunity to show all types of hurting animals: goats, cows of different races, colors, and textures of the fur.
The excellent study of the anatomy that distinguished the Bonheur's painting emerges in every subject of the work, combined with an extraordinary setting and clever use of chiaroscuro. The steep nature of the land allows the artist to play with the background environment and open, on the left, a patch of the rough sea under the stormy, leaden sky, crossed by clear sun rays, as is typical of the Scottish imaginary. The men are silhouetted in the running, as the real protagonists here are the living beings unable to communicate but through the power of the muscles, the forced and restless poses. Three bulls in the front row look at the observer to involve him in work. The black bull, a powerful, attentive one, is the center of the painting. He serves as an axis of symmetry to the picture through the outstretched ears, and the fixed gaze searching our attention. Further to the right, a light bull with a raised hoof shows itself in profile as it scans the sea, perhaps in search of an escape route. Each animal is not only physically described, but also has a unique kind of emotional quality.
