Théodore Rousseau The voice of the Forest

Théodore Rousseau, La Vallée de Saint-Vincent, 1830, oil on paper laid down on canvas, The National Gallery, London. © The National Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867) was the leader of the colony of artists who frequented the village of Barbizon and the forest of Fontainebleau. Spending long hours wandering the forest alone, he sketched on the spot before producing his final works in his studio. Admired by the young Impressionists and the photographers who followed his footsteps through the forest, Rousseau single-handedly embodied the vitality of the landscape school, in the middle of a century marked by the industrial revolution and the rise of the life sciences. The exhibition brings together almost one hundred works from major French museums and other European institutions as well as private collection. These works show the extent to which the artist deserves a significant place in the history of art and landscape, but also reveal the influence his work has had on our contemporary relationship with nature.

Rousseau’s love of nature soon turned into a battle, and for this reason, he can be considered a true proto-ecologist: along with other artists and writers, The focus he shined on Fontainebleau led to the protection of part of it under the name of the famous "artistic reserves" (1853), a first in a world in the throes of industrialisation.

Both a romantic and a realist, Rousseau aspired to capture the harmony of the world, by mixing his soul with it. He blurred the boundaries between painting and drawing, between sketch and finished work. He experimented, adding matter and tirelessly retouching his canvases, going so far as to overload them to bring out the life of the forests. As Baudelaire wrote, he was a "naturalist constantly drawn towards the ideal", and played a fundamental role in establishing a new French school of landscape painting in the mid-nineteenth century, paving the way for Impressionism.