Sentier dans la clairière parmi les bruyères

Details

Théodore Rousseau (French, 1812-1867)
Sentier dans la clairière parmi les bruyères
signed 'TH: Rousseau.' (lower left)
oil on panel
14 ¾ x 26 ¼ in. (37.5 x 66.7 cm.)
Painted circa 1855-60.

Provenance

with Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie., Paris.
Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904), New York.
Elbert Henry Gary (1846-1927), New York.
His sale; American Art Association, New York, 20 April, 1928, no. 19, as Earth, Trees, and Sky.
Henry Walters (1848-1931), New York and Baltimore.
Sarah Jones Walters, his wife, by descent.
Her sale; Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 23-26 April 1941, lot 1176, as Earth, Trees, and Sky.
Kurt M. Stone.
with Wildenstein Arte S.A., Buenos Aires.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 22 May 1991, lot 6.
Acquired by the present owner circa 1995.

Literature

M. Schulman, Théodore Rousseau, catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, Paris, 1999, p. 257, no. 464, illustrated.

Lot Essay

The present picture belonged to several of the most important Gilded Age collections in America, including the founders of two different museums. Samuel Putnam Avery was a founder and long-time trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as well as the founder of the Avery Library at Columbia University, an esteemed art and architecture reference collection. Elbert Henry Gary, who owned the picture after Avery, was a founder of U.S. Steel, alongside his partners J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and Charles M. Schwab. Finally, the work was owned by Henry Walters, an art collector and philanthropist whose extensive collection would go on to form the basis of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

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