Painting Detail
View on the Outskirts of GranvilleArtist: Theodore Rousseau
Medium: Painting, Oil on canvas, 85x165 cm
Date: 1833
Genre: Landscape
Source: Museum of the Academy of Arts, Petrograd, 1922
The landscape painter Rousseau was the leader of the Barbizon School of artists, which took its name from the village of Barbizon near Paris. This work was shown at the Salon in Paris in 1833 and brought the artist fame. It's success was such that it was later exhibited at the international Exposition Universelle of 1855.
Rousseau worked mainly from studies he took from nature while staying in the small provincial town, Granville, in Normandy. The unremarkable rural location is captured in all its ordinariness. Walking along the road, large baskets in their arms, are some children. A peasant has stopped his cart near a pond to let the horses drink. Behind the cottage, in the light area between two trees, we see a broad valley and the flat surface of the sea on the horizon. Rousseau paid great attention to the physical sensation of form, to material, creating convincing portrayals of the rocks, the moss, the trunks and crowns of the trees, the fern on the hill, the variety of clouds, with the impasto manner and rough paint surface typical of his style.