Theodore Rousseau

Etienne Pierre Theodore Rousseau , more known under the name of Theodore Rousseau , born the April 15th 1812 with Paris, dead the December 22nd 1867 with Barbizon, is a painter French, founder of the school of Barbizon. It appeared like a conscientious observer of nature at all the times of the year. Its invoice remained very hard and strong near to traditional teaching often with repentance and repainted unceasingly renewed.

Biography

After having succeeded in exposing to the Living room of Paris of 1831 with 1835, it essuya a refusal for the living room of 1836, which led it to leave to settle with the edge of the Forêt of Fontainebleau, thus melting the school of Barbizon, where will come to join it in particular Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, Honore Daumier, Jules Dupre, etc

Theodore Rousseau was an artist at the same time admired and scorned in his time. Its art is complex to define. It has at the same time a realistic character by its will to paint nature such as it is presented to him and romantic because it aims at amalgamating with the nature.
The goal of Rousseau was “to excavate the visible one”. With this intention it was inserted in the depths of nature, chose a reason and observed it during long hours so as to durably print it in its memory. Then it carried out drafts and carried out final work, of memory, in workshop. Theodore Rousseau endeavoured to represent “all that nature contained of strange germinations”. In its work, the tree occupies a broad place there. Throughout its career, it multiplied the drafts of trees in particular in forest of Fontainebleau. He was regarded as a “anatomist” of the tree. But much more than one academic exercise, the tree revêt at his place a particular symbolic system. It is the incarnation of the continuity of the life. The representation of the light was its ambition. But it is at the origin of all its torments. It quickly becomes an obsession so much so that Rousseau will multiply the pictorial receipts to try to return it. Theodore Rousseau is thus one of the first landscape designers to represent the light falling to the vertical. Perpetual dissatisfied, it will multiply the pictorial experiments and will improve its works not without deteriorating them. The use of the bitumen, which appears dice 1839 in the " descent of vache" , is one of the causes at the origin of the deterioration of many fabrics of Rousseau. According to his biographer, Alfred Sensier, it would be on the councils of Scheffer, that it employed this mixture of fatty oils and bituminous colors which had disastrous consequences on its painting.

The place of the man in the work of Rousseau caused many interrogations. If it is not completely absent in its paintings, it occupies a negligible place there. According to Sensier, by reducing the presence of the man to a spot of color, Theodore Rousseau wanted to underline the “pathetic impotence of the man vis-a-vis the vastness of the nature which surrounds it”.

The official recognition of Rousseau came on April 1st, 1848, when Jean Ron and Charles Blanc went, in a symbolic gesture, in the workshop of Dupre and Rousseau to order two works to them. Theodore Rousseau carried out Skirt of forest of Fontainebleau, setting sun (Louvre), a rather traditional and somewhat theatrical work in his composition. Since 1849, it joined again with the living room. The year 1852 was that of the dedication for the painter: it exposed to the living room " Group oaks with Apremont" and receipt the legion of honor, supreme recognition for an artist. Finally it is invested in the fight against the demolition of the trees which it described as “carnage” or of “death sentence”. Rousseau had already denounced this phenomenon in the massacre of the innocent in 1824 (Mesdag, $the Hague). It will arouse in the artists an interest for the forest of Fontainebleau.

Very impregnated by a simple life in which it côtoie for example of many peasants and workers of the forest, his work is characteristic of a realistic current which will be the principal mark of the school of Barbizon. He is sometimes considered, with some of his friends, like a precursor of the Impressionnisme.

Some works

Seen basin of Paris and course of the Seine (1833)
Drill of Compiegne (1833)
the Edge of a wood cut (1834)
Descent of cows in the High-Jura (1835)
Under the beeches or the Priest (1842)
the Alley of chestnuts (Museum of Louvre) (1849)
the Edge of a wood (1849)
Grounds of autumn (1849)
the Entry of Bas-Bréau (1850)
the Village of Barbizon (1850)
Landscape after the rain (1852)
Throats of Apremont
the Crossroads of the Spine (1857)
the Demarcation of Barbizon (1859)
the Oak of rock (1861)
Clearing in the mature standing timber (1863)
Sunset on the forest (1866)
sun laying down close to Arbonne (1868)

External bonds

Theodore Rousseau in Artcyclopedia

Random links: