FOLLOWER OF THEODORE ROUSSEAU (French, 1812-1867) "Figure in a Clearing." Unsigned. Oil on panel, 11½" x 13½" (sight); 20" x 22" (framed). Price Category: B

Theodore Rousseau was one of the most influential landscape painters working in France at the midpoint of the 19th Century. He was considered a leader of the Barbizon School and in that capacity attracted numerous disciples. Barbizon, a village on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest to the south of Paris, was the hub for a group of painters active from the 1830s whose interests centered on romantic, meditative scenes of natural beauty. This generation formed a bridge between the academic Salon painters of the early 19th Century and the Impressionists, who came to the fore in the 1860s and 70s. In their day, Rousseau and his followers were considered revolutionary, preferring to paint outdoors "en plein air," rather than in studios and elevating landscape to an important place in the hierarchy of approved subjects. (Before them, the academy regarded landscape as of interest primarily as background for mythological or historical subjects.) Among Rousseau's followers was a young Frenchman of Spanish descent named Narcisse Diaz de la Peña, who soon became an important artist in his own right. Stylistically, our painting most closely resembles the work of Diaz, but no claim of attribution is asserted here. Following the tradition of Diaz and Rousseau, this artist sets his scene in a dark, densely wooded forest, most likely the Forest of Fontainebleau. A typical gesture of the Barbizon movement was to highlight the central interest of a scene-here a figure in a clearing bathed in light-by setting the figure off against a dark background of lush foliage. A richly toned stormy sky completes the dramatic composition. Diaz painted almost identical scenes on more than one occasion, as did other followers of Rousseau. Our best guess is that this painting was executed by a member of the Diaz circle. Provenance: Bonhams, London, October 7, 2003, Lot 232. The attribution is by Bonhams.

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