Page 18 - Theodore Rousseau: A Magnificent Obsession

A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION

P ainted and re-painted
over a period of nearly
twenty-five years, La
Ferme dans les Landes belongs
to a set of three late
masterpieces, all of similar
size and format, which
includes LeVillage de Becquigny
in the Frick Collection, New
York (Fig.3),1 and Le Four
communal dans les Landes in the
Museum der Bildenden
Künste, Leipzig (Fig.4).2

Fig. 3 - LeVillage de Becquigny - The Frick Collection, NewYork

Fig. 4 - Le Four communal dans les Landes - Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig While the two latter paintings
have always been well known,
La Ferme, which was last seen in
public in the 1940s, has long
been considered as lost. Having
lain hidden in a Portuguese
private collection for over sixty
years, it was rediscovered only
in recent times and was made
the subject of a comprehensive
monographic study by Simon
Kelly, which provided much of
the information in this note.3
The history of these three

1 Schulman, op. cit., p. 326, cat. no. 643, illustrated.
2 Ibid., p. 182, cat. no. 269, illustrated.
3 Kelly, op. cit., 2001.

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