Oil painting, 'Landscape with a Stormy Sky', Théodore Rousseau, France, ca. 1842

A pool with trees growing on the bank in the middle distance; rising ground in the background to the spectator's left; stormy sky.

Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides

Acquired by Constantine Alexander Ionides for £150, on 26 February 1883, probably from the firm Hollender 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.

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.

Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867) was born in Paris where he trained with his cousin, the landscape painter Alexandre Pau de Saint-Martin (1782-1850), and subsequently with Joseph Rémond (1795-1875). In spite of progressively emerging as the leader of the Barbizon school, Rousseau was systematically excluded from the Paris Salon between 1836 and 1841. Between the revolution of 1848 and the early 1860s, Rousseau enjoyed a short period of prosperity with official commissions and was eventually made Officer of the Légion d'honneur in 1867, a few month before he died.

This painting is a fine example of Rousseau's dramatic atmospheric landscapes. It was probably executed en plein air, directly after the motif in the surroundings of Fontainebleau where he settled in the 1840s. Originally executed on paper and later laid on canvas, this painting was probably made en plein-air, directly after the motif in the forest of Fontainebleau. This artistic practice was characteristic of the painters of the School of Barbizon, of which Rousseau is considered one of the most authoritative exponents.

CAI.55