When the city of Bordeaux declined to purchase it, Bonheur accepted an offer from the British dealer Ernest Gambart (it was immediately afterward that Chennevières made the offer recounted above). (On the foregoing see Klumpke 1908.) Upon the close of the Salon The Horse Fair traveled to Ghent, and in 1854 it was shown in Bordeaux. Following the success of The Horse Fair, however, Charles-Philippe de Chennevières, Inspector-General of Fine Arts and chief administrator of the annual Salon, made an attempt to substitute our picture for the other his offer was refused. Asserting that she was too inexperienced in painting horses to carry out the present scene successfully, Morny selected Haymaking, which depicts peasants loading a haycart pulled by oxen. At the invitation of Charles de Morny, the Minister of the Interior who oversaw the Division of Fine Arts, Bonheur presented studies for The Horse Fair and another projected picture, Haymaking in the Auvergne (1855 Musée National du Château, Fontainebleau), in the hope of securing an official commission. Bonheur was well established as an animal painter when the canvas debuted at the Paris Salon of 1853, where it was generally praised. In arriving at the final scheme, Bonheur also drew from the precedents of George Stubbs, Théodore Gericault, and Eugène Delacroix. An early inspiration for the picture came when Bonheur "happen to think about the Parthenon friezes while in a crowd of horse dealers trying out their beasts" (Klumpke 1908). Her choice of massive draft horses, rather than saddle horses, depicted at the moment of turning before they stride back up the boulevard, imparts thunderous movement and energy to the scene.
For a year and a half Bonheur sketched there twice a week, having obtained permission from the police to dress as a man to discourage attention (Davies 1970). This, Bonheur’s best-known painting, shows the horse market held in Paris on the tree-lined Boulevard de l’Hôpital, near the asylum of Salpêtrière, which is visible in the left background.
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