A Morning View of Valmontone near Rome(Jean-Victor Bertin)
JEAN-VICTOR BERTIN (Paris 1767-1842)
Jean-Victor Bertin was the son of a master wigmaker, as were his contemporaries Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes and Louis Moreau. His inception to the Royal Academy of Painting dates to 1785, at which time Bertin was a pupil of the history painter Gabriel-François Doyen. Three years later he joined the studio of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, who had returned from Italy four years earlier and who undoubtedly formed the artists taste for things Italianate. Like his master, Bertin exhibited paintings at the Parisian Salon from 1796. In 1799 he was awarded the Prix dEncouragement and this afforded him the possibility to work as a painter for the State. In 1801 he unsuccessfully proposed the creation of a Prix de Rome for landscape painting, but it was not until Valenciennes was able to arrange an endowment for the prize that it became firmly established from 1816 . It is not known exactly whether Bertin travelled to Italy during the period 1806-1808, but after 1808 many of the canvases he exhibited at the Salon are of Italian landscapes. He won a médaille de premiére classe in 1808, and was awarded the Légion dHonneur in 1817.
In the succeeding years his fame spread progressively. In 1812 he received a commission for a painting with military subject matter relating to Napoléon I for the decoration of the palace of the Grand Trianon in Versailles. In 1819, at a time when, in common with many artists, he had adapted to the troubadour style, Bertin received another important commission from Louis XVIII to participate in the decoration of the Galerie de Diane at Fontainebleau by submitting a landscape painting.
By this time Bertin had already devoted himself to the publication of numerous lithographs representing landscapes and buildings. His Recueil détudes darbres, containing about 35 lithographs, was published between 1816 and 1824. It was also during this period that the Grand Prix de Peinture de Paysage Historique was established (1817) and the first winner, Achille-Etna Michallon, was one of Bertins pupils. Bertin continued to exhibit his paintings at the Salon until 1842, influencing many painters of the time including his pupils Augustin Enfantin, Felix-Hippolyte Lanoüe, Jean Charles Joseph Rémond and Jean-Baptiste Corot. This last artist was by far Bertins most famous pupil and spent five years in his studio after leaving that of Michallon.
A Morning View of Valmontone near Rome or Le Paysage dItalie
Oil on canvas, 29 ½ x 42 15/16 in. (75 x 109 cm.)
Signed and dated lower left: Bertin/1812
An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece or Site de la Grèce
Oil on canvas, 29 ½ x 42 15/16 in. (75 x 109 cm.)
Signed and dated lower left: Bertin/1812
PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Brussels since 1930
EXHIBITED:
Musée Napoléon, Paris Salon, 1812, nos. 69 and 70.
Although Jean-Victor Bertin exhibited four paintings in the 1812 Salon, only one of these was known until just recently: LArrivée de S. M. LEmpereur à Erlanger où elle est reçue par le prince de Bade, intended for the Trianon Palace, (Musée de Versailles). This painting draws its subject matter from contemporary history. Bertin also presented two landscapes inspired by classical Italy, Vue dune partie de la ville de Valmontone près de Rome (Plate 1) and Vue dun monastère près de Subiaco, dans le Sabine, as well as a painting entitled Site de la Grèce (Plate 2) which can be identified as the pendent to the Italian landscape in this publication since it was engraved by Louis Normand laîné, to illustrate the Annales de Musée by Charles Paul Landon.
A Morning View of Valmontone near Rome is constructed in the same manner as its pendent view of Greece (see below), but Bertin uses a horizontal composition in this landscape where the perspective is constrained by the mass of the hill dominating the middle distance. The scene unfolds on a sunlit path, which stretches across the painting, where the narrative content is expressed by figures moving through the composition from left to right, arriving at a group climbing up to a town nestled below the top of the hill. Bertin places at the central viewpoint the heroic image of a rider astride a prancing horse on the path. Antique equestrian portraits possibly inspired this image and the leaping dog in pursuit mirrors the horses movement. These figures are made all the more poignant by the simple backdrop of trees and the sense of energy, time and purpose that impels the eye of the viewer forward into the picture plane. The components of this panorama not only reflect its historical context but equally, through a series of natural vignettes, the movement of light and water. Indeed, as in the pendant, Bertin carefully stages the motifs, as if in a story or play, in order to create a continuing contemplative journey through a serene environment.
An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece, also an extensive landscape, is conceived in receding planes around elements that structure the compositions narrative content. The scene unfolds once again on a sunlit path leading from the right foreground and regressing into the distance following the banks of the river. A couple, dressed in white and wearing garlands upon their heads, are strolling with a group of figures along a path towards a temple in the middle distance to the left of the composition. They are preceded by a circle of children bearing rosettes of flowers and figures moving to the second plane of the composition where a priest stands in front of the temple, before a smoking brazier and appears about to hold a ceremony. More figures are gathered or are still arriving from the far woods in order to attend the event. As in the pendant, the eye lingers on a series of vignettes. These not only narrate the historical context but also encapsulate the movement of the setting sun to the right behind a hillock studded with trees. This evening light is reflected in the foliage of the trees that dominate the centre of the canvas, forming a glade dappled with light. The long shadows of the trunks orchestrate a composed effect of classical tranquillity. The dispersed content of the subject are anchored within the composition by the elements of water to the left and right of the landscape, and to the left, a rocky ravine where the roots of a large tree plunge into a stream with green verdant plants at the edge; to the right, a river flows and bends in the distance. Across the river, can be seen a town with mountains behind. Once again, there is a hill town above the temple, which is dominated by a mountain, matching the pendant.
These landscapes were painted as a pair, and this is confirmed not only by their size, but also by the fact that they are each signed and dated on a rock at lower left. The paintings were conceived as two separate, yet unified compositions, with the format of A Morning View of Valmontone near Rome on the left, extending towards the right into An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece. This is evidenced by the continuation of the sloping horizon line, which extends downward left to right through the two canvases until the eye lands upon the Greek temple where it is arrested. The river flowing naturally in the foreground of the paintings provides a further link between the two compositions.
The cold morning light in A Morning View of Valmontone near Rome, that illuminates the figures in their bucolic activities, becomes warmer and pink in, An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece where the shadows are lengthened to suggest a time near sunset. In contrast to the industry of the morning scene, the figures in the second composition enjoy a period of rest and contemplation. Bertin further emphasises this dialectic by setting his idealised and eternal pastoral scenes in Italy and Greece, two countries with an intimate cultural connection.
Jean-Victor Bertin as a landscape painter before 1812
In 1788, Bertin was admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture as a pupil to Gabriel-François Doyen (1726-1806), who had also once taught Valenciennes. The previous year, upon his return from Italy, Valenciennes had been accepted to the Académie Royale with his work Cicéron découvrant le tombeau dArchimède. By 1789, he had replaced Doyen as Bertins master and his influence must have been considerable, as Bertin continued to present himself at the annual Salons as une élève de Valenciennes until he was forty. To understand the profound effect Valenciennes exerted on his pupils stylistic development as a landscape painter, one need only compare Valencienness 1788 Salon entry of the Ciceron découvrant le tombeau dArchimède with the two paintings under discussion here (Fig.1).
When Bertin entered Valencienness studio, his master had already achieved a certain notoriety, but he was not yet a professor and had not, at this time, published his treatise Eléments de perspective pratique à lusage des artistes, suivis de Réflexions et Conseils à un Elève sur la Peinture et particulièrement sur le genre du paysage. This elaborate study of the landscape tradition and its interpretation through the use of plein air sketches played a fundamental part in maintaining his stature as the leading component of the neo-classical landscape movement, as can be seen not only in his career-advancing 1788 canvas, but also in two Salon entries from the previous year: LAncienne ville dAgrigente, now in the Louvre (Fig.2), and Un paysage de lancienne Grèce, in the Detroit Institute of Art. As Valenciennes illustrated in these paintings, just as he argued in his treatise, as far as he was concerned, landscape and the classical tradition were inextricable. He conceived his landscapes as carefully observed ideals of nature that serve effectively, but not exclusively, as vehicles for the classical narratives that populate them. Bertin, as one of his most sympathetic and talented students, became one of the foremost exponents of Valencienness approach to the landscape genre. This devotion can be clearly seen in a landscape, now in Kentucky, which is considered to be his first signed landscape (Fig. 3). It is possible that this picture is related to another classical landscape, Site dItalie. Fête au Dieu Pan, recorded under no. 35 in the Salon of 1796, and is even possibly a reduced version of this painting, but this must remain conjecture until this work can be located, as there are no dimensions in the Salon booklet.
By the time of his Salon debut in 1793, Bertin already betrayed Valencienness profound influence, particularly in his disciplined and precise drawing technique, which was a benchmark of his masters atelier. This careful draughtsmanship is evident in two series of drawings by Valenciennes. These sheets, executed in pierre noire estompée, heightened with white chalk on beige paper, show a didactic firmness of line and application that possibly served Bertin as a model for a finished drawing, which he included as part of his 1799 Salon entry, Paysage sur papier couleur, as well as another drawing dated from the following year, Hercule et le lion (Fig.4) . In this latter sheet, Bertin places the struggle between Hercules and the Nemean Lion at the edge of a wood. The light is picked out by short strokes of white chalk. The darker foreground shows a tree trunk and plants treated in black lead, progressively toned or estompé in black chalk, lending an overall effect of depth to the landscape. This technique is very similar to Valenciennes own depiction of trees and their foliage in the Louvre sheets and is typical of the technique that Bertin the draftsman would eventually hand down to his own pupils, particularly Achille-Etna Michallon (1796-1822).
In his drawings, as in his paintings, Bertin organised his compositions in registers proceeding from the foreground to the background. This method was already firmly in place in the first phase of his career, as can be seen in an oil on canvas Un Paysage fluviale, (Fig.5), signed and dated 1805. Here, the small boat and figures in left foreground lead the eye towards the right of the canvas to the trees on the riverbank in the background, and back again to the hill town on the left, a composition that Bertin would, with some variations of figures, repeat later in An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece. Bertin used perspective to entice the viewers eye beyond the foreground and into the varying depths of the picture plane and he interestingly achieved this by establishing a strong foreground. Like most of his contemporaries, Bertin initially painted the elements in his pictures in reverse order of how they were to be perceived. For example, he established the horizon line of his landscape first, before he added the specifics of topography, vegetation, and figures. However, a small painting in Cleveland, View in Italy with an aqueduct and a castle beyond, (Fig.6) differs from Bertins earlier landscapes . Here, the eye is anchored around the middle of the composition by the horizontal axis of the aqueduct which, reinforced by the foreground cluster of trees, separates the foreground from the background almost in the manner of a theatrical flat crossing a stage set. This structural ploy allowed the artist to create a rational atmospheric sense of distance without drawing attention away from the foregrounds carefully articulated trees and rocks, the swirling waters of the stream, and most particularly, the classically-draped shepherd that enlivens them. The aqueduct furthermore separates the strong evening light into the concentrated glow of the setting sun, which, coming from the left, casts a series of changing shadows across the aqueduct. These strongly angled shadows highlight the middle distance at right, and capture the sense of chiaroscuro that is inherent in the light of Italy. To achieve this effect, Bertin must have painted the background of the landscape first and then preceded to define the aqueduct. Then, realising that the composition would be too uniform, he added the sustaining group of trees in the foreground, which is clearly evidenced by the transparent nature of the foliage at the lower right. In the Cleveland painting Bertin appears to have intended this visual barrier between the foreground and background, and, indeed, this compositional technique of depicting the background through an arch or a group of trees soon became a familiar device amongst his contemporary landscape painters. Also of note, is an earlier canvas in Sceaux, Lentrée du Parc de St. Cloud, (Fig.7), which is dated by Suzanne Gutwirth to circa 1802. In this picture, the composition is dominated by the park gate, which at first glace prohibits the eye from extending beyond it. However, by the addition of the row of trees just visible through the opening of the gate, Bertin creates a recession into the park which is further encouraged by the figure of a soldier, seen from behind, who walks towards the entrance and seems to invite the viewer to follow him. The Sceaux picture, an oil on panel in the Louvre Vue prise à Essonnes (Fig.8), and its pendant, Etude daprès nature prise à Essonnes in a London private collection, and many other landscape studies of the same period follow this basic formula of a landscape organised into two spatial and narrative registers, which is peopled by genre groups, often in classical dress, and in the case of the views of Essonnes, wherein Bertins own house was possibly featured, these works are often conceived as pendent works.
At the Salon, Bertin continued to present Italianate and often classically themed landscapes, expressing the prevailing fashion for landscape painting at the time. In the 1808 Salon alone, he exhibited Vue de la ville de Fossombrone, Vue de la ville de Terracine, with a related drawing, Vue prise à Palestrine, Vue prise à lentrée de Pérouse, Environs de Ronciglione, and Vue dune partie du village dOlevano. Unfortunately, with the exception of Environs de Ronciglione, which is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, the current locations of the 1808 Salon landscapes are unknown, making a compositional analysis of this early group impossible at this time.
The large number of Bertins landscape paintings and drawings which are inspired by or actually located in Italy, would give rise to the supposition that at some point he journeyed there, and in general, scholars believe this hypothetical trip to date from between 1806 and 1808, though this is not documented. Bertins references to Italy in his work occur fairly suddenly after 1806, but are tantalizingly non-specific. There are no topographically accurate views of Tivoli, such as those by his master Valenciennes, nor any specific views of the many renowned antique temples or monuments. Nevertheless, Bertins ability to capture the extraordinary clarity of the light of Italy as vividly displayed in our two paintings argues compellingly that he must have first-hand knowledge of that country. It is reasonably safe to assume therefore, that Bertin travelled to Italy before 1808, and made there a number of plein air studies, which he brought back to France, providing him with a rich body of aides memoires for his Salon pictures of 1808 and beyond. In the 1810 Salon, he presented another Vue du village dOlevano, as well as Vue prise près de Narny, and a Vue de la ville dItri dans la Royaume de Naples. Moreover, right until the end of his career he produced Italianate landscapes.
When Bertin made his Salon debut in 1793, he was confronted with several paintings of Italian views. Bidauld presented in that year two paintings, Vue de Grotta Ferrata, and Vue de la ville Davezzano dans le Royaume de Naples, which were painted c. 1789 and are now lost (Fig. 9 reproduces a plein air sketch for the Avezzano view now in the Louvre, oil on canvas; 37 x 49 cm.). Bertin must immediately have understood that a successful, that is to say industrious, Italian tour was a potential ticket-to-ride for any painter at the time insofar as the artist successfully assembled a répertorie of the landscape motifs and compositions that, at this time, so consistently captured the publics imagination and taste.
1812: A Morning View of Valmontone near Rome (Paysage dItalie) and An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece (Site de la Grèce)
Amongst Bertins 1810 Salon entries was included a mythological landscape Une forêt avec Apollon et Daphné, (Fig.10). While in general Bertins approach to classical narrative in his landscape works rarely extended beyond the evocative , in this particular painting Bertin recognised the clear potential for combining his source material with his approach to the landscape genre. As is well known, in the myth the nymph Daphne, in desperate flight from Apollos unwelcome attentions, evoked the aid of her goddess Diana, who transformed her into a laurel tree at the very moment Apollo tried to grasp her. Although, Bertin only depicted the moment of the flight, and not the actual metamorphosis, he nevertheless manages to communicate the Enlightenment belief that man was elementally connected with nature, a conviction that underlines the enduring appeal of this particular myth in French art. Bertins interpretation of the Apollo and Daphne myth was possibly predicated by the very same academic tradition dictating the use of classical subjects that formed the foundation for similar works by his master Valenciennes. In the 1793 Salon, Valenciennes exhibited two pendent works Paysage où se voit Biblia (Byblis) changée en fontaine and Narcisse se mirant dans leau (Fig.11). In the first painting, the artist depicts the end of the sad tale of Byblis, a nymph who had the misfortune to fall in love with her twin brother Caunus, who upon learning this, fled from her in horror. Byblis pursued Caunus, but unable to find him, she collapsed to the ground in exhaustion and grief, her tears transformed into a spring. The pendent work depicts the moment in the well-known myth of Narcissus where, upon discovering his own exquisite reflection in the still waters of a pond, he mistook it for his soul mate, and eventually died, pining away for his impossible love. This picture was the only mythological landscape that is mentioned in Valenciennes treatise and was most likely very well known by Bertin who, no doubt, had thought about the literary source and about the possibility of drawing subjects from it for pendant paintings.
Indeed, Valenciennes and his contemporaries exhibited several pendent pairs of works at the Salons of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1793, Jean-Baptiste Sarazin presented a pair of paintings with complementary subjects, which were depicted at different times of the day: morning and sunset. At the Salon of 1798 Bertin presented a Soleil couchant and a Soleil levant. The latter was described in the Salon booklet with a sub-title Site de la Grèce. Des jeunes gens sexercent à la course auprès dun vieux temple. Clearly this was a title that Bertin found not only evocative, but practical too, as it recurs not only in our painting, but also in another work formerly in the collection of the Duchesse de Berry. Charles Paul Landon in his Annales du musée et de lécole moderne des beaux-arts, describes our painting, Bertins 1812 Salon entry thus:
In designating this landscape as a site in Greece, as inscribed in the Salon booklet, M. Bertin has indicated neither the region from which this site originates, nor the monuments that he has represented. One might therefore believe that this viewpoint is imaginary and that the temple rising in the middle of the waters to the left of the spectator is only an imitation or a reminiscence of some of the magnificent monuments whose ruins still litter the ground of Greece, and testify to the taste and magnificence of the ancients. Furthermore, this site, where a river flows gently, is very picturesque. One would like to wander on its banks where thousand of thick trees keep the cool. One would like to climb these rugged mountains dominating the horizon and standing proudly against a clear blue sky crossed only by a few light clouds. The shades of this landscape are soft and harmonious, the touch denotes a gracious and facile talent.
Despite Bertins lack of philology in his treatment of this Greek landscape, Landon underlined its gentleness, its charm and its verisimilitude and in fact lent no importance to the scenes contribution to the definition of classical landscape.
In Valenciennes treatise where a section is dedicated to how the different times of the day may be depicted, he presented the wedding of Tarsis and Zelie as a model narrative for a painting, which describes the evening. This story, from the book by Roland LeVayer de Boutigny, was published several times between the 17th and 18th centuries. Valenciennes could have read it in the new edition by Louis-Daniel Colson, published in Paris in 1774. The story relates that in the valley of Tempe in Thessaly, where the river Pineios flowed through a plain verdant with luxurious vegetation (Fig.12), there stood the town of Gonne with the temple of Daphne, where the priestesses lived, amongst them, Zelie. She was loved by the priest Tarsis who, not realising she had become a Daphnïde, thought she was dead and decided to offer his life in sacrifice. In her role as a priestess, Zelie was to perform the sacrifice, not knowing that the victim was Tarsis. She only recognised him as she neared the altar and was then unable to go through with the ritual. Only the intervention of the high priest, who consulted an oracle, saved Tarsis, and the lovers were married at the selfsame altar, which had previously been prepared for the sacrifice. In this very romantic story, Valenciennes saw its dual themes of love and death as inextricably entwined in much the same way as he held classicism and landscape to be. Consequently, he advised painters that rather than depicting the dramatic climax of Zelies recognition of Tarsis at the altar, they should instead depict the final happy denouement, where all gather to attend the wedding. Valenciennes wrote: It is this triumphal march that we would like to represent in this painting. The hour of the declining day, all the preparations for the sacrifice and the nuptial feast are mingled with the music players, the group of priests, old men, women, young girls and children who are following or preceding the couple . It is possible that Bertin also meant to depict this story in An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece in accordance with his masters suggestion and it is worthwhile noting that Valenciennes in fact exhibited a Paysage (unknown location) in the Salon of 1806 representing, as stated in the Salon booklet, a part of the Tempe valley in Thessaly, where the story of Tarsis and Zelie was also set.
It seems probable that Bertin wished to follow closely Valenciennes precepts. If so he would have faced a slight dilemma. A pendant to the Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece, which also drew inspiration from the Tarsis and Zelie story, such as the dramatic scene by the sacrificial altar, would also have had to be set in the evening. So how might Bertin have approached the problem of exactly how to depict a morning scene as a pendant? Once again a close study of Valenciennes precepts is revealing. Valenciennes had suggested that for a morning landscape, the scene should be set in classical Greece, during the feasts of the town of Delphi and that it might depict, for instance, a sacred wood, the processions walking towards the temple of Apollo with festive offerings, together with all the appurtenances appropriate to feasts and ceremonies. But, had Bertin followed this advice he would have risked painting a composition whose subject content would have been almost identical to that of An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece. A study of Valenciennes treatise Réflexions et Conseils is again enlightening. Here, he stated that a morning scene may be painted without necessarily showing the costumes of the antique world, but that alternatively, in order to make the most of the morning, it should be represented dans le commencement de prairial, that is to say between spring and summer, preferably at dawn, or some two hours after the sun had risen and was a little higher in the sky. This would be the ideal time for a painter to observe the countless travaux de campagne or rural activities. Valenciennes describes thus the list of activities upon which an artists attention might focus: A horse savouring the fresh and tender grass of his pasture flares its nostrils to the zephyrs which waft him the scent of his loving companion. He shakes his undulating mane and jumping the fence which surrounds the park, he gallops away to his mate, arriving, his eyes shining, his loud neighing announcing his impatience and desire. When looking at Bertins A Morning View of Valmontone near Rome (Plate 1) and its pendant, An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece (Plate 2), ones eye is not only drawn to the horse and rider set at the centre of the composition, but also to the rural activities which animate the countryside: the woman carrying a weight on her head, the shepherd with his flock, and the cart with oxen. It seems obvious that Bertin wanted to make use of the Morning and the Evening time, in order to characterize these two precise moments of the day through the negotium on one hand, that is the practical activities of man and, on the other hand, the otium or its opposite leisure. This link between the two paintings is expressed by the continuity of the landscape in the foreground from one side to the other, as pointed out earlier in this text. This repeats a methodology already adopted by Bertin in two paintings exhibited at the Salon of 1804, at least by judging from the engravings by Antoine-Patrice Guyot.
Bertin again makes use of the heroic motif of a rider on a leaping horse in the small and beautiful Paysage composé, which must surely be of a similar date to the above paintings (Figs.13-14A). Here, in a very complex and elaborate composition, Bertin again shows his mastery in constraining the landscape, which is broken by a diagonal plane running across the composition from the left to the right. On the left, there is a running river fed by water springing from a massive rocky outcrop surmounted by trees, which fill the centre of the composition. This diagonal continues to the right, where a hill is covered with trees and verdant vegetation where houses nestle. In the foreground there is a diagonal of a rocky path with trees edging the river. This area, lit by the sun, is of a lighter tonality, which is again repeated beyond the middle darker mass of the composition. The eye is arrested in the distance by a high rocky cliff surmounted by a castle to the left. There are mountains in the middle distance and to the far right. Again the lighting of the subject has a theatrical quality, which Bertin has also dramatised in this scene, by means of the trees and figures and by a strong wind blowing from the right of the composition. The woman in the foreground accompanied by a dog is endeavouring to hang on to her shawl. On the left, beyond the river, spotlighted again as in the heightened tonality of the foreground is the leaping horse with its rider whose cape is blown in the wind. All of these components might almost have been inspired by Vernets late work.
Bertins activity after 1812
In A Morning View of Valmontone near Rome and An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece Bertin described the scattered trees as scrupulously as a botanist. This precise attention to nature is also evident in the small plants in the right foreground on the edge of the river in A Morning View of Valmontone near Rome (fig.15), as well as those on the banks of the stream and amongst the rocks, in An Evening Landscape in Ancient Greece (fig.16). By the early nineteenth century, the accurate study of trees was paramount to every artists success as a landscape painter and the myriad examples in sketchbooks of the time attest to this. Roger de Piles wrote in 1708: It has always seemed to me that one of the greatest ornaments of landscape consists in the beauty of the trees… The critic dedicated the longest paragraph of Du Paysage to trees, and underlined the variety they offered the painter as opposed to the other natural elements: Although diversity is pleasing in all objects when composing a landscape, it is principally in the trees that it has shown its greatest delight. It makes itself noticeable in the variety of species and their shape. De Piles imposed the classical principle of varietas, on the painters powers of observation and deduction, which, if successful, should by their very nature be precise, analytical, and acquired only through thorough study. The spectator should be able to recognise at first glance the type, form and genus of his arboreal subject. Painters consequently filled their sketchbooks with drawings and oil sketches to serve as ready-made crib-sheets.
Valenciennes had assembled an annotated album of nature studies around 1775 and we can infer from Bertins many drawings and prints that he probably referred to his mentors sketchbooks in the course of executing his own nature studies. His drawings of isolated trees are, like many such studies made at this time, the logical product of the academic tradition of figure studies made by historical painters (Fig.17). Bertins drawings of trees, beyond their incorporation into the structure of his landscape compositions, were even made as specifically preparatory for a finished painting. Two small oils in Avignon, Etude de chêne (Fig.18) and Etude dormeau, are completely focused upon trees and the small figures groups beneath them are ancillary.
This tradition of tree studies as integral to the development of landscape painting gained further ground when Alphonse Nicolas Michel de Mandevare published in 1824 a selection of landscape lithographs. The volume enjoyed significant critical success, and the plates were subsequently used by a great number of artists. De Mandevare even helped to promote the fashion for Landscapes courses in art schools and academies during the 19th century. Perhaps, in order to use it in his instruction, or perhaps because he had understood the possible profit in reproducing his studies, Bertin published, between 1816 and 1824, R
Private Collection, Brussels
C.Stefani, Bertin’s Ideal Landscapes, London, 2004
Salon 1812