Interpretation
By 1830, when Rousseau traveled to Auvergne, the making of plein-air (outdoor) oil sketches was an established tradition. Rousseau’s innovation was to explore the French countryside, particularly the dramatic Massif Central—mountains, plateaus, and gorges in the center of France, formed by volcanic and glacial forces. In a period of scientific advances in geography and geology, this region must have seemed attractive to an artist seeking alternatives to the Italian landscape tradition, and his explorations parallel those of the Romantic writers and musicians who used Northern myth and history for fresh, nationalistic subject matter.
Information
- Title
- Landscape (Auvergne?)
- Object Number
- y1948-5
- Maker
- Théodore Rousseau
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dates
- ca. 1830?
- Dimensions
- 27 × 34 cm (10 5/8 × 13 3/8 in.) frame: 42.5 × 51.6 × 5.1 cm (16 3/4 × 20 5/16 × 2 in.)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Frank Jewett Mather Jr.
- Culture
- French
- Place made
- Europe, France
- Place depicted
- France?, Auvergne
- Signatures
- Signed in red, lower right: THR
- Philippe Burty, "Les études peintes de Th. Rousseau", Maîtres et petits maîtres, (Paris: G. Charpentier, 1877)., p. 76-92
- "Recent accessions," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, vol. 7, no. 2 (1948): p. 11., p. 11
- "[Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. 1868-1953: In memoriam]", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 13, no. 1 (1954): p. 2-19., p. 16 (illus.)
- Annie-Paule Quinsac, Millet, Corot and the school of Barbizon: [catologue of a travelling exhibition], (Hyogo: Museum of Modern Art, 1980)., pl. T53, p. 142
- Michael Schulman and Marie Batailles, Théodore Rousseau: 1812-1867, (Paris: Editions de l’amateur : Editions des catalogues raisonnés, 1997-1999)., Vol. 2: p. 93, no. 36 (illus.)
- Earth's beauty revealed: the nineteenth-century European landscape, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2002)., cat. no. 12 (illus.); fig. 1
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