Page 12 - Theodore Rousseau: A Magnificent Obsession

Fig. 1 - Maison Atelier de Theodore Rousseau, Barbizon

Rousseau exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1831 and three years later he won a
third class medal for a painting of recently cut timberland - a very unusual subject. But
by 1836, Rousseau’s intense colouring and startling compositions made his pictures stand out
as a direct threat to the more traditional landscape style promoted by Academic authorities.
The Salon jury rejected his large painting of The Descent of the Cattle that year, achieving a succès
de scandale among young artists and their liberal supporters. For the next five years, Salon juries
consistently refused Rousseau’s paintings, until he stopped attempting to exhibit. Throughout
the late 1830s and the 1840s, Rousseau became a powerful force by his absence from the Salon
and he acquired the nickname Le Grand Refusé. In 1844 he visited the South of France and
painted in Les Landes, thereafter basing his scenes on the countryside of Berry, Normandy,
Picardy, where he travelled with his friend Jules Dupré and above all in the Forest of
Fontainbleau where he maintained his studio at Barbizon after 1846-7 (Figs. 1 & 2). He was
one of the first landscapists to make this tiny village just outside the Forest of Fontainebleau his
permanent home. There he also formed a close friendship with Millet. His pictures were
occasionally exhibited privately in Paris and from time to time major paintings were illustrated
in various periodicals. Influential members of the Romantic generation such as Eugène
Delacroix and the novelist George Sand drew attention to Rousseau’s cause.

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