Theodore Rousseau

Theodore Rousseau was considered the leader of the Romantic-Naturalist artists of the Barbizon School.  Rousseau’s rather melancholy, powerful pictures reveal a very concise observation of light. He studied initially with his cousin, the landscape painter Alexandre Pau, and then in 1829 with Remond, Lethiére and others at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.  Rousseau completed his artistic education with open-air painting. He was probably the first to paint plein-air in the woods of Fontainebleau.  In 1830 he painted in the Auvergne mountains, and travelled to France and Switzerland.  In 1831 he made his Salon debut with Landscape in the Auvergne but thereafter went through a period of constant rejections.  In 1833 and 1834 he won a Salon third-class medal. In 1836 he was in Barbizon for the first time and became a central exponent of the realistic, atmospheric landscape painting that came to be known as the “Barbizon School”.

Initially, Rousseau’s landscapes were somewhat hard and severe.  They were often rocky and dark and frequently set within the forest.  These pictures were eventually supplanted by the style that predominates perhaps some of his best known paintings.  The pictures became softer, lighter and were generally considered more romantic.  During the 1840s he exhibited frequently at the Salon des Refusé becoming a well known but controversial landscape painter.  In 1849 Rousseau won a first-class medal at the Salon and in 1854 was awarded the cross of the Legion of Honor.  In 1866 art dealer Durand-Ruel represented Rousseau’s work.