With Camille Corot and Jean-François Millet, Théodore Rousseau (1812-67) ranks as one of the preeminent masters of the Barbizon School, a group of 19th-century French artists whose preferred subject was the primeval wooded landscape of the Forest of Fontainebleau. The Barbizon School painters were greatly influenced by the Romantic movement, producing works inspired by the powerful forces of nature. Surprisingly, despite his pivotal role in French art and his profound impact on the development of landscape painting, Rousseau has never before been the subject of a monographic exhibition.
Comprising 70 works from private and public collections, including those of the Morgan Library & Museum, this exhibition will consider the artist's wide-ranging achievements as a draftsman and his particular approach to the open-air oil sketch. It will trace Rousseau's path to Barbizon, from his early oil sketches in the Ile-de-France to his mature works in the Auvergne, Normandy, and Fontainebleau forest, assessing the impact of the Dutch masters on the artist's landscape imagery. Rousseau's works, some bucolic and evocative of a simpler, pre-industrial age, others brooding, moody, and redolent with lingering vestiges of Romanticism or testaments to the haunting majesty of the natural world, are both appealing and instructive. Collectively, this selection chronicles Rousseau's artistic practice and highlights his contribution to the shifting conception of landscape in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. The show will explore the range of techniques and handling of media, and the sense of poetic melancholy that permeates Rousseau's art. A fully illustrated, scholarly catalogue will accompany the exhibition.
The exhibition is made possible through the generosity of Karen B. Cohen, with additional support from the Estate of Alex Gordon and Mr. and Mrs. Clement C. Moore II. The catalogue is underwritten by the Franklin Jasper Walls Lecture Fund.
The exhibition will open on Friday, Sept. 26, and run through Sunday, January 18, 2015. The Morgon Library & Museum is located at 225 Madison Ave. at 36th Street in New York City. For additional information, call 212-685-0008 or visit www.themorgan.org.