.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Though he was classically trained in Paris, Théodore Rousseau’s novel Romantic depictions of his native landscape, inspired by the plein-air work of John Constable and Richard-Parkes Bonnington, would lead a revolution in French landscape painting which ultimately paved the way for Impressionism later in the 19th century. Rousseau taught himself to be a landscape painter while traveling extensively through France from the late 1820s until settling in Barbizon in about 1847, making freely handled plein-air paintings of the landscape in front of him (see lot 4 for an example of one of these early paintings). Often seeking out the most distinctive and uniquely French landscapes of the country, from the barren heights of the Auvergne to the great marshy expanses of the Landes, Rousseau learned to capture vast, wild spaces with sweeping rhythms of color and to animate his broad compositions with carefully observed meteorological phenomena and a highly individualized painterly touch. La Plaine de Chailly près de Fontainebleau brings these skills to bear on a scene that might rightly be described as his own backyard.
The great Plain of Chailly extended around the southern edge of the village of Barbizon, which gave its name to the school of artists, including Rousseau and his dear friend Jean-François Millet, who lived and worked in and around the village. The Plain was bordered by the walled bornage (limit) of the Forest of Fontainbleau on the east and faded off into the Plain and woodlands of Macherin to the southwest. Rousseau's home and studio stood just inside the village wall which bordered the Plain and the artist could access it by a nearby arched gateway. Thought Millet is perhaps better remembered for his depictions of the Plain and Rousseau for his work in the adjacent Forest of Fonatainbleu, in La Plaine de Chailly près de Fontainebleau Rousseau turns his attention to the Plain, capturing both the detail of the foreground landscape and figures, bathed in shadow, and the vast sweeping sunlit landscape beyond with characteristic aplomb. Rousseau’s painting is not a timeless ideal landscape in the neoclassical tradition in which he was trained, but rather evokes the ephemeral feeling of the landscape just as it was in the moment the artist was there painting. Here, La Plaine de Chailly près de Fontainebleau captures the sense of one of the last warm days in early autumn with the villagers attending to their various tasks in the open air, as the leaves have begun to change around them.
The great Plain of Chailly extended around the southern edge of the village of Barbizon, which gave its name to the school of artists, including Rousseau and his dear friend Jean-François Millet, who lived and worked in and around the village. The Plain was bordered by the walled bornage (limit) of the Forest of Fontainbleau on the east and faded off into the Plain and woodlands of Macherin to the southwest. Rousseau's home and studio stood just inside the village wall which bordered the Plain and the artist could access it by a nearby arched gateway. Thought Millet is perhaps better remembered for his depictions of the Plain and Rousseau for his work in the adjacent Forest of Fonatainbleu, in La Plaine de Chailly près de Fontainebleau Rousseau turns his attention to the Plain, capturing both the detail of the foreground landscape and figures, bathed in shadow, and the vast sweeping sunlit landscape beyond with characteristic aplomb. Rousseau’s painting is not a timeless ideal landscape in the neoclassical tradition in which he was trained, but rather evokes the ephemeral feeling of the landscape just as it was in the moment the artist was there painting. Here, La Plaine de Chailly près de Fontainebleau captures the sense of one of the last warm days in early autumn with the villagers attending to their various tasks in the open air, as the leaves have begun to change around them.