Page 11 - Theodore Rousseau: A Magnificent Obsession

PIERRE ÉTIENNE THÉODORE ROUSSEAU

Paris 1812-1867 Barbizon

Inarguably, the most consistently controversial landscape painter working in France
throughout his lifetime,Théodore Rousseau’s genius for interpreting the natural world was
only fully appreciated (if no less contentiously) after his death. From his early views of the
rural outskirts of Paris, and the Auvergne, which he painted in the 1820-30s up until his
participation in the 1867 Exposition Universelle, where he chaired the paintings jury, Rousseau
constantly and deliberately distinguished himself from his contemporaries. His use of strong
colour, atmospheric light effects, experimental chemical techniques, and a penchant for
depicting unusual topographies from innovative viewpoints, made Rousseau’s landscapes a
compelling counterpoint to the diffused, emotive tranquillity that typified the work of his
greatest contemporary, Camille Corot.

Rousseau grew up in Paris, the son of a tailor, and received his first drawing lessons from a
relative, the landscapist Pierre-Alexandre Pau de Saint-Martin. At thirteen, he spent a year
working at a sawmill in the mountainous Franche-Comté and returned with a sketchbook filled
with woodland scenes and animal studies. In 1827, he entered the studio of Jean-Charles-Joseph
Rémond, a landscape artist working in the officially promoted classical style, but he also studied
and made copies after the carefully structured Italianate landscapes of Claude Lorrain in the
Louvre, as well as the more vernacular scenes of Dutch masters such as Henry van deVelde and
Karel Dujardin. He complemented his formal training by continuing to paint en plein air in the
woodlands around Paris, and his friendship with Paul Huet introduced him to a freer, more
personalised approach to landscape, as well as to the work of English artists, such as Huet’s
friend, Richard Parkes Bonington and John Constable. During a lengthy summer trip through
the Auvergne in 1830, Rousseau began to establish an independent style, and the forceful
application of paint and unusual viewpoints captured in his sketches from that Auvergne voyage
brought him the admiration of Ary Scheffer, a major force in the new Romantic movement.

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