If she had her hour of glory and knew the consecration of her lifetime, Rosa Bonheur, who died 123 years ago, does not retain much less attention today than Emmanuel Macron. As a result, his genealogy is much less known and if it is well partly present on Geneastar, she does not have a cousin to date, which is rare. It’s a shame, because the family tree of this woman painter and sculptor, famous for her representations of animals, is not lacking in interest.
The first is to have posed the question of the heredity of genius or talent, a question posed by Francis Galton, cousin of Darwin, who denounced in 1869 an astonishing family concentration of artists. The family includes Rosa’s father, Raymond Bonheur, drawing teacher and painter himself, his brothers Antoine, painter, and Isidore, painter and sculptor, and his sister Juliette, painter and mother of a sculptor. (Hippolyte Peyrol), without forgetting a half-brother, Germain, born of the late remarriage of Raymond, who will also be a painter. To this skewer of close relatives would be added another painter, Ferdinand Bonheur, born in Brussels in 1837, son of a Samuel and grandson of a Servais or Serve Bonheur, from Maastricht, husband of an Esther Boncoeur or Roncoeur, but with whom it is not very clear how Rosa might be related… On the other hand, the deepening of the family tree found on Geneastar will suggest another artist ancestor, who might also have weighed on this heredity.
On all sides, the tree deposited on Geneastar can be clarified or supplemented.
Happiness sidefirst with three generations of cooks – by this we mean cooks, working in the service of important people – driving to Verdun-sur-Garonne, in the Tarn-et-Garonne, then to Toulouse, with the couple Jean BONHEUR/Françoise DEPIGERON. An untraceable couple, but which must in reality correspond to the couple Antoine BONHOUR / Françoise PIGERON, married in Saint-Étienne-de-Toulouse, in 1709, and whose religious marriage certificate gives the reference of the marriage contract, which should allow to go back further. With perhaps, in the end, the attachment to a BONHOUR family, laborers in Bessens (82), between Toulouse and Montauban, the only family of this name in the sector and whose members bear the first names present in the line studied.
Dussaut sidewith beyond the DUSSAUT/COUDERC couple, sailor and weaver ancestors and a DUSSAUT “ master sculptor in Verdun in the 1640s, who went to settle – probably due to a youthful mistake – in Montauban. The first sculptor or artist of the family?
Perrar sidewith the couple Antoine PERRAR, Thai, and Suzanne CANNOPEL or CANNOPET, certified around 1750 in Saint-Priest-Bramefant (63), on the borders of the Allier, then in Moulins.
Vial side, with origins in Dauphiné. The ancestor no. 54, Claude VIAL, being born in Grenoble and coming to Bordeaux as a high forest carpenter, where he had become “ public works contractor ».
Dublan sidewith for ancestor Pierre DUBLAN, notary in Moulon (33), including the homonymous bride and groom of 1769 (the sosa 12 and 13) were both grandchildren, having married between first cousins.
But the big question, in this tree, remains that of the origins of Rosa Bonheur’s mother. If she is generally known under the name of Sophie MARQUIS, her marriage certificate, in 1821 in Bordeaux, does not give her a name and refers to an act of notoriety, saying she was born of “ father and mother unknown “. Some genealogists say she is the daughter of an apparently untraceable couple Laurent Modeste Antoine MARCHISIO dit MARQUIS and Marie Anne TRILING. Officially, she was born on March 2, 1797 in Altona, Germany, where there were many French noble emigrants, including Jean-Baptiste Dublan de Lahet, who brought her back with him to Bordeaux in 1799, designating her as his niece. or his ward and who will offer him an education worthy of an aristocrat. She will marry her drawing teacher before, the couple having separated, she must lead a life of misery alone in Bordeaux, following Dublan, on his deathbed, revealed to her that he was her biological father. A confidence that nevertheless left the mystery of Sophie’s mother intact and that sometimes caused people to whisper that she might be of royal blood.
Baptized Rosalie, first name of the mother of this biological grandfather and benefactor, the child, born more than 200 years, the 16 March 1822, will be known under the diminutive of Rosa. She will have a lot of trouble learning to read and we know that her mother succeeded in making her progress, by making her select and draw an animal for each letter of the alphabet.
