The Horse Fair
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To study the horses she painted here, Rosa Bonheur visited the horse market on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital in Paris twice a week for a year and a half, sketching in a smock and trousers—clothing she wore with police permission, since women's dress was then legally restricted.
Bonheur (1822–1899), born in Bordeaux, was widely regarded as the most famous woman painter of the nineteenth century. She worked as a painter, sculptor, and animalier, specializing in animal subjects treated with close observation. This canvas, painted between 1852 and 1855, was shown at the Paris Salon of 1853.
The painting is enormous, measuring nearly eight by seventeen feet, and depicts the Parisian horse market with muscular draft animals handled by their grooms. It entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1887 as a gift from Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Background drawn from The Met & Wikipedia
Today's poem
To F--
Beloved! amid the earnest woes That crowd around my earthly path-- (Drear path, alas! where grows Not even one lonely rose)-- My soul at least a solace hath In dreams of thee, and therein knows An Eden of bland repose. And thus thy memory is to me Like some enchanted far-off isle In some tumultuous sea-- Some ocean throbbing far and free With storm--but where meanwhile Serenest skies continually Just o'er that one bright inland smile.
Edgar Allan Poe · Public domain
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Edgar Allan Poe (American, 1809–1849) is best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, and he is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States and of early American literature. He worked as a writer, poet, editor, and literary critic.
"To F--" is a love lyric rather than a work of horror, showing a different register of Poe's poetic output. Across its two stanzas, the speaker addresses a beloved as a source of consolation amid the "earnest woes" of his life, describing that "drear path" as barren of even a single rose.
The poem develops through a sustained image: the memory of the beloved becomes "some enchanted far-off isle" set in a stormy, "tumultuous sea," yet ringed by serene skies. The contrast between surrounding turmoil and a single point of calm organizes the whole piece, casting the beloved as a place of "bland repose" and refuge.
Background drawn from PoetryDB & Wikipedia