Theodore Rousseau: A Barbizon Master

Theodore Rousseau - The Forest in Winter at Sunset - ca. 1846-67 - Oil on canvas - 64 x 102 3/8 in. (162.6 x 260 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (click photo for larger image)The Barbizon School was a group of landscape artists working in the area of the French town of Barbizon, south of Paris. They rejected the Academic tradition, abandoning theory in an attempt to achieve a truer representation of life in the countryside. They are considered part of the French Realist movement.

The Barbizon School artists are often considered to have sown the seeds of Modernism with their individualism, and they were the forerunners of the Impressionists, who took a similar philosophical approach to their art. Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867) is the best-known member of the group.

The work featured here is unrivaled for its scale and ambition. This monumental forest scene was begun early in Rousseau's career and remained unfinished at the time of his death. According to one account, Rousseau’s intention was to recreate the effect of a sunset he had seen in a section of Fontainebleau forest, in December 1845. “The tangled web of trees, denuded of foliage and suffused with deep color, conveys a sense of awe before nature that is amplified by the presence of two stooped peasants at the center.”