.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Théodore Rousseau was undeniably one of the most important artists of the mid-19th century and was considered a leader of the Barbizon school. With his extensive stylistic and technical variety, his unconventional oeuvre established the basis for new artistic parameters for landscape painters a generation before the advent of Impressionism. Few artists before him attempted such an array of motifs or captured such a range of visual effects with such sensitivity to the subject matter. By breaking so completely with the reigning artistic conventions of his time, Rousseau remained controversial and polarizing for much of his career, not unlike Gustave Courbet (fig. 2), although he was ultimately celebrated one of the most important innovators of the era.
Rousseau was the archetypal peintre de pays. As a young artist, he did not make the often required trip to Italy and chose to forgo the idealizing paradigm of 18th century Italianate landscape painting and instead chose a pure landscape painting that did not require a literary foundation. Rousseau chose to depict his native landscape as seen with a heightened sensibility to change of season, time of day or weather with none of the contrived composition so relished by the Classicists. His fellow artist, Eugène Fromentin wrote of his artistic perception: ‘In nature, he discovers thousands of completely new things. The repertoire of his sensations is immense. Every season, every hour of day, evening and dawn, all the inclemencies of weather, from the hoarfrost to the dog days; every altitude, from the strand to the hills, from the downs to Mount Blanc; the villages, meadows, copses, forests, the naked earth, and the foliage with which it is covered – there is nothing that not tempted him, stopped him, won him over by its interest, persuaded him to paint it’ (E. Fromentin, Les maîtres d’autrefois, Paris, 1876, p. 277).
To his contemporaries, Rousseau represented the perfect symbiosis between art and nature. His immersion in plein air study was legendary, even to the point of devising various tools to facilitate painting out of doors. This obsession with capturing nature as it appears upset previously perceived notions of composition. The sketch, the one pure capture of nature in all its unruly glory, grew in importance in Rousseau’s art and informed the artist’s technique down to the individual brushstrokes, and changed forever the definition of artist's ‘finish’. As Robert L. Herbert states in the catalogue of seminal exhibition Barbizon Revisited, ‘In broken visible brushwork like chopped straw and their vibrant, textured tapestries of color we can feel stirring the breeze of Impressionism’ (Robert L. Herbert in Barbizon Revisited, exh. cat., San Francisco et al.,1962-1963, p. 48).
Although sketching outdoors was fundamental to Rousseau’s artistic technique, he held an unwavering commitment to studio work. His studio paintings, of which Le chêne de roche is an extraordinary example, were carefully thought out and meticulously rendered creations. In the present work, Rousseau depicts a gnarled, ancient oak tree growing up out of a rocky landscape in the forest of Fontainebleau. For Alfred Sensier, the artist’s biographer, it represented ‘one of the most beautiful creations of Rousseau’ (A. Sensier, Souvenirs sur Théodore Rousseau, Paris, 1872, p. 258). The artist himself called particular attention to the painting when he submitted it as his sole entry to the Salon of 1861. The critic Theophile Thoré remarked on its majesty as well as its almost pointillist surface and indicated that it should be shown in a room on its own. Rousseau emphasized his pride in Le chêne de roche by making his own etching of the painting to illustrate a review in the prestigious Gazette des Beaux-Arts (fig. 1). Rousseau was accustomed to causing controversy and with Le chêne de roche he challenged Parisian sensibilities once again. The mystical sliver of daylight at the end of a tunnel of mossy rocks startled critics. The extraordinary surface detail of ferns and lichens and thousands upon thousands of glinting leaves mocked the detractors who previously complained the artist could never finish a painting. His fame as a colorist is evident in the myriad shades of very dark greens offset by the brilliant reds of the holly in the undergrowth and the touches of silver and Naples yellow in the bark of the old oak tree. And as the fame of Le chêne de roche grew after Rousseau’s death in 1867, the powerful old oak came to appear as a stand in for Rousseau himself, thriving in the most hostile terrain.
(fig. 1): Théodore Rousseau, Le chêne de roche, engraved 1861.
(fig. 2): Gustave Courbet, The Oak at Flagey, 1864. Murauchi Art Museum, Tokyo.
Rousseau was the archetypal peintre de pays. As a young artist, he did not make the often required trip to Italy and chose to forgo the idealizing paradigm of 18th century Italianate landscape painting and instead chose a pure landscape painting that did not require a literary foundation. Rousseau chose to depict his native landscape as seen with a heightened sensibility to change of season, time of day or weather with none of the contrived composition so relished by the Classicists. His fellow artist, Eugène Fromentin wrote of his artistic perception: ‘In nature, he discovers thousands of completely new things. The repertoire of his sensations is immense. Every season, every hour of day, evening and dawn, all the inclemencies of weather, from the hoarfrost to the dog days; every altitude, from the strand to the hills, from the downs to Mount Blanc; the villages, meadows, copses, forests, the naked earth, and the foliage with which it is covered – there is nothing that not tempted him, stopped him, won him over by its interest, persuaded him to paint it’ (E. Fromentin, Les maîtres d’autrefois, Paris, 1876, p. 277).
To his contemporaries, Rousseau represented the perfect symbiosis between art and nature. His immersion in plein air study was legendary, even to the point of devising various tools to facilitate painting out of doors. This obsession with capturing nature as it appears upset previously perceived notions of composition. The sketch, the one pure capture of nature in all its unruly glory, grew in importance in Rousseau’s art and informed the artist’s technique down to the individual brushstrokes, and changed forever the definition of artist's ‘finish’. As Robert L. Herbert states in the catalogue of seminal exhibition Barbizon Revisited, ‘In broken visible brushwork like chopped straw and their vibrant, textured tapestries of color we can feel stirring the breeze of Impressionism’ (Robert L. Herbert in Barbizon Revisited, exh. cat., San Francisco et al.,1962-1963, p. 48).
Although sketching outdoors was fundamental to Rousseau’s artistic technique, he held an unwavering commitment to studio work. His studio paintings, of which Le chêne de roche is an extraordinary example, were carefully thought out and meticulously rendered creations. In the present work, Rousseau depicts a gnarled, ancient oak tree growing up out of a rocky landscape in the forest of Fontainebleau. For Alfred Sensier, the artist’s biographer, it represented ‘one of the most beautiful creations of Rousseau’ (A. Sensier, Souvenirs sur Théodore Rousseau, Paris, 1872, p. 258). The artist himself called particular attention to the painting when he submitted it as his sole entry to the Salon of 1861. The critic Theophile Thoré remarked on its majesty as well as its almost pointillist surface and indicated that it should be shown in a room on its own. Rousseau emphasized his pride in Le chêne de roche by making his own etching of the painting to illustrate a review in the prestigious Gazette des Beaux-Arts (fig. 1). Rousseau was accustomed to causing controversy and with Le chêne de roche he challenged Parisian sensibilities once again. The mystical sliver of daylight at the end of a tunnel of mossy rocks startled critics. The extraordinary surface detail of ferns and lichens and thousands upon thousands of glinting leaves mocked the detractors who previously complained the artist could never finish a painting. His fame as a colorist is evident in the myriad shades of very dark greens offset by the brilliant reds of the holly in the undergrowth and the touches of silver and Naples yellow in the bark of the old oak tree. And as the fame of Le chêne de roche grew after Rousseau’s death in 1867, the powerful old oak came to appear as a stand in for Rousseau himself, thriving in the most hostile terrain.
(fig. 1): Théodore Rousseau, Le chêne de roche, engraved 1861.
(fig. 2): Gustave Courbet, The Oak at Flagey, 1864. Murauchi Art Museum, Tokyo.