Page 30 - Theodore Rousseau: A Magnificent Obsession

completion. Finally, in the later 1850s, Rousseau even resorted to painting a replacement picture
to assuage his patron, Gorges d’Apremont (Middlebury, College Museum of Art), but Hartmann
rejected it in favour of La Ferme.

A letter from Millet to Rousseau shows that the artist was planning to submit La Ferme to the
Salon of 1857. However, Rousseau subsequently changed his mind and continued to work on the
painting, apparently fully intending its imminent delivery to Hartmann. As Kelly notes, Rousseau
commented that Ferme dans les Landes had bittersweet connotations for him since it was not only
the product of his innermost conviction and initial ‘impression’ but also the embodiment of
what separated his production from that of his contemporaries:‘this work is for me the object
of serious thought and bittersweet study: sweet in so far that it originates from the most
harmonious accord of my faculties, and leads me logically on the strength only of a first
impression to a full realization of form; bitter in that it is out of step with the speed of execution
that characterizes our time, and the flippant judgments that people make of works of art, and
also because I ask myself for whom would I make such pictures without feeling a sense that my
efforts were wasted on any collector.’ 18

℘℘℘

In June of 1858, Millet wrote in a letter to Rousseau:‘It seems that your Ferme turns out ever
more beautiful. I will keep in mind to look at it before its departure.’19 But by the following
year Hartmann appeared to have all but given up hope of getting his treasured painting. At one
point he even suggested to Rousseau, who was at this point of his career in some financial
distress, that he could sell the work to someone else, as long as he painted a replica for Hartmann
within a year. Rousseau refused, insisting that despite having received and refused several offers
for La Ferme, only Hartmann knew how to truly appreciate the work. This conviction did not
however prevent Rousseau from tripling the price to FF 9,000.

18 Ibid., p. 688, note 24.
19 Loc cit., note 20.

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