Physical description
A pool with trees growing on the bank in the middle distance; rising ground in the background to the spectator's left; stormy sky.
Place of Origin
France (painted)
Date
ca. 1842 (painted)
Artist/maker
Rousseau, Pierre-Etienne-Théodore, born 1812 - died 1867 (artist)
Materials and Techniques
oil on millboard
Marks and inscriptions
At the back a red seal of Jules Brawere, Expert, Bruxelles
64 Théodore Rousseau
Esquisse
Site boisé avec cours d'eau se détachant vigoureusement sur un ciel tourmenté et orageux.
H: 23 cent. L: 34 cent. Bois.
Corot 17731
Dimensions
Height: 24.8 cm estimate, Width: 35.2 cm estimate
Object history note
Acquired by Constantine Alexander Ionides for £150, on 26/02/1883, probably from the firm Hollander and Cremetti (cf. Ionides' manuscript inventory of his collection, private collection). Bequeathed to the Museum in 1900.
Historical significance: This painting is an oil sketch, probably executed en plein air, directly after the motif. It shows a group of trees dramatically silhouetted against the stormy sky, which glow is reflected in the pond's surface in the foreground. The palette is almost only composed by two colours: a dark almost black blue and a bright yellow. Two small red and orange dots in the central foreground suggest the presence of two figures.A critic described this sketch as ‘the suggestion of a storm in a drowned country, with a wild sky drawn in with furious touches…nature never smiled on Rousseau, and he rigorously excluded all domestic sentiment’.
This painting is a fine example of Rousseau's interest for the rendering of the atmospheric effects in the countryside. He lived in the nearby village of Barbizon, which gave its name to the realist movement developed there by artists attracted by the atmospheric effects and the beautiful nature of the forest of Fontainebleau. Their art is reminiscent of John Constable and 17th-century Dutch landscape painters, whose depiction of the natural world had a strong influence on their technical approach.
Rousseau composed several atmospheric paintings such as the present one in the same contrasted tones (see for instance Road in the forest of Fontainebleau, Louvre, Paris on loan to the Musée des beaux-Arts Jules-Chéret, Nice - Inv. RF 1887).
A very similar composition is in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, entitled 'The Pool' and dated c. 1850. This finished version shows however a sunny daylight. Rousseau was used to rework his paintings in his studio and it is therefore not unlikely that this sketch had inspired another composition.
This painting with its dramatic atmospheric effects shows Rousseau's transitional position between Romanticism and Naturalism.
Historical context note
19th-century French art is marked by a succession of movements based on a more or less close relationship with nature. At the beginning of the century, Romantic artists were fascinated by nature they interpreted as a mirror of the mind. They investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious and the occult. This movement was heralded in France by such painter as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). In its opposition to academic art and its demand for a modern style Realism continued the aims of the Romantics. They assumed that reality could be perceived without distortion or idealization, and sought after a mean to combine the perception of the individual with objectivity. This reaction in French painting against the Grand Manner is well represented by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) who wrote a 'Manifesto of Realism', entitled Le Réalisme published in Paris in 1855. These ideas were challenged by the group of the Barbizon painters, who formed a recognizable school from the early 1830s to the 1870s and developed a free, broad and rough technique. They were mainly concerned by landscape painting and the rendering of light. The works of Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), Jules Dupré (1811-1889), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Constant Troyon (1810-1865) and Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) anticipate somehow the plein-air landscapes of the Impressionists.
Descriptive line
Oil painting, 'Landscape with a Stormy Sky', Théodore Rousseau, France, ca. 1842
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Schulman, M, Théodore Rousseau, 1812-1867, catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, 1999, 243 p. 171.
Kauffmann, C.M. Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, II. 1800-1900, London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973, pp. 89, 90, cat. no. 193.
The following is the full text of the entry:
Pierre Étienne Théodore ROUSSEAU (1812-67)
French School
Born in Paris in 1812, he was studying painting professionally with the painter Redmond from the age of fourteen. He began painting from nature during excursions in the environs of Paris, including Fontainebleau, from 1826 to 1829. From 1831 to 1836 he exhibited at the Salon, but the naturalism of his landscapes made him the most controversial figure of his time and the consistent refusal of the Salon to accept any of his work between 1837 and 1848 earned him the title of Le Grand Refuse. From about 1837 he went to Barbizon nearly every year and became the central figure of the group of painters associated with that place, but public recognition came only with the Revolution of 1848 and the first class medal awarded by the free jury of the 1849 Salon.
Lit. R. L. Herbert, Barbizon revisited, New York, 1963.
193
LANDSCAPE WITH A STORMY SKY
Oil sketch on millboard
9 ¾ x 13 7/8 (24.8 x 35.2)
lonides Bequest
CAI.55
Datable c. 1842 on account of its close stylistic relationships with the 'Marais de la Souterraine' (John Tillotson collection; repr. Arts Council, The Romantic Movement, 1959, no. 310, pl. 28; Hazlitt Gallery, Rousseau, 1961, no. 23, Herbert, Barbizon revisited, no. 92, p. 184), which has been placed in 1842, the date of Rousseau's first visit to Berry.
Prov. Jules de Brawere, Expert, Brussels (seal on back); acquired by Constantine Alexander Ionides before 1884; bequeathed to the Museum in 1900.
Exh, French and Dutch Loan Collection, Edinburgh International Exhibition, 1886 no. 1169 (no. 97 of Mem. cat.).
Lit. Monkhouse, 1884, p. 42 f., repr.; Memorial of the French and Dutch Loan Collection, Edinburgh International Exhibition 1886, 1888 (repr. of a sketch of it by William Hole, R.S.A.); J. W. Mollett, Millet,Rousseau, Diaz, 1890, repr. Facing p. 58; A. Tomson, Jean-François Millet and the Barbizon School, 1903, repr. facing p. 200; Sir C. Holmes in Burl. Mag., vi, 1904, p. 26, repr. as frontispiece; Long, Cat. Ionides Coll., 1925, p. 56, pl. 32; V. & A. Museum, The Barbizon School, 1965, p. 16, pl. 4.
Monkhouse, Cosmo, The Magazine of Art, vol. VII, 1884, p. 42.
The sketch (...) is the suggestion of a storm in a drowned country, with a wild sky dashed in with furious touches. Against it tossed trees wave their blurred boughs, which are reflected in the flood beneath. To Constable, despite its wind and rain, nature smiled, for it was home. But nature never smiled on Rousseau, and he rigorously excluded all domestic sentiment from his work'
Holmes, Sir Charles, The Burlington Magazine, vol. VI, 1904-5, p. 26.
'Rousseau is seen at his best, as a bold interpreter of nature in her grandest mood, and as a fine colourist'
Memorial of the French and Dutch Loan Collection, Edinburgh International Exhibition 1886, 1888 (repr. of a sketch of it by William Hole, R.S.A.
J. W. Mollett, Millet,Rousseau, Diaz, 1890, repr. facing p. 58.
A. Tomson, Jean-François Millet and the Barbizon School, 1903, repr. facing p. 200.
B.S. Long, Catalogue of the Constantine Alexander Ionides collection. Vol. 1, Paintings in oil, tempera and water-colour, together with certain of the drawings, London, 1925, p. 56, pl. 32.
Kauffmann, C.M., The Barbizon School, 1965, p. 16, pl. 4.
J. Bouret, L'Ecole de Barbizon et le paysage français du XIXe siècle, Paris, 1972, p. 22 illus.
Exhibition History
French and Dutch Loan Collection (Edinburgh International Exhibition 01/01/1886-31/12/1886)
Materials
Oil paint; Millboard
Techniques
Oil painting
Subjects depicted
Landscape; Trees; Storms; Pool
Categories
Paintings
Collection code
PDP
