landscape

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Muse dOrsayService cultureltext: F. Sorbiertranslation: F. Troupenat and E. Hinton Simoneaugraphism design and printing :Muse dOrsay, Paris 2005

The rise of landscape painting

Presentation Objectives Before and after the visit The visit: list of artworks Bibliography

PresentationTo study the stages in the spectacular rise oflandscape painting throughout the 19thcentury it isimportant to keep in mind the parameters oflandscape painting as a specific genre.

1. What is a landscape?

Whatever its historical and cultural context,painting has very often dealt with the problem ofsetting objects or figures within a space andtherefore has had to address the representation ofdepth. Artists could choose either to create theillusion, using all manner of methods rational orintuitive or, equally, they could choose to ignore it.Over time, representations of places havenevertheless been numerous: partial views ofnatural scenes, fields, meadows, valleys, forests,mountains, in most cases these are merelybackgrounds, stylised to a greater or lesser degree,but believable. The use of the phrase landscape is only reallyjustified when the featured place not only occupiesa central place in the space of the painting bypresenting a view, but above all when, rather thanbeing a mere setting or background, it constitutesthe main subject of the painting.Despite the creation in 1816 of a Prix de Rome forhistorical landscape inspired by Pierre-Henri deValenciennes (whose reform of the Beaux-Artssystem was to lead to its suppression in 1863), theearly 19th century inherited the hierarchy ofgenres established two centuries before byFlibien and set up as the norm by the Acadmieroyale, in which landscape painting is situated justabove still-life but beneath the noble genres(history painting, Genre, portraiture). Barelyrecognised as a specific genre, landscape paintingwas undervalued as it supposedly did not requirethose supreme artistic qualities and moral values:idea, invention, humanity.These criteria were used to establish yet anothertwo-fold hierarchy within the genre itself: withpastoral landscape taking second place to heroiclandscape (historical or mythological). In 1859, inthe chapter of the Salon devoted to landscapepainting, Baudelaire defined landscape, studied forits own sake, as an inferior genre and the sillycult of nature.

2. The expansion of the genrein the 19th century

Following the resurge of interest in nature, whichbecame apparent at the end of the 18th century,and the growing interest in direct observation ofthe surrounding environment, landscape paintingwent through an exceptional development duringthe 19th century, occupying a leading place withinmany artistic movements of this period. Artists,wanting to free themselves of the burden oftradition, abandoned the formal compositions ofparticular events or narratives in order to simplyrepresent pieces of the natural world, identifiedand localised by titles. In his commentary on the1866 Salon, remarking on the growth in plein airpainting constructed partly or entirely on thesubject of nature, the critic Jules Castagnary wroteof the great army of landscape painters.Yet the reasons for this recourse to landscapepainting were as many the artists who took it; theprevalence given to the immediacy of visualsensations and the variations and reflections oflight, gave way, in the last two decades of thecentury, to a new conception of the subject. Itwas no longer considered as mere material to becopied or as a scene to be articulated, but as thestarting point for a more autonomous use ofpictorial means. Colour and brush stroke inparticular were used to construct space, relief andvolumes, soliciting the active participation of theviewer in the figurative interpretation of theartwork.At the same time, the emancipation of paintersfrom pure retinal sensation gave new importanceto the spiritual dimension of landscape painting,manifested through a visionary symbolismsometimes accompanied by a return to Antiquitythrough a revisited mythology.

Objectives1. The aim of the visit is to have the pupils observethat, through the prevalence given to landscapepainting, new conceptions of pictorial practicetook shape which had their sources in a newperception of the world. The development of thisgenre resulted from the artists wanting to teachpeople to look at the world around them byenabling them to recognise it in paintings of actualplaces. Yet a paintings function is always morethan a mere description; it brings into play a seriesof signifiers rooted in the particular pictorialdevice of the artwork. In this respect, realism mayalso be said to be a form of convention, aninterpretation that obeys codes, rather than anexact replica of reality.

2. It is important to avoid presentingImpressionism as the apex of landscape painting,using it as the bench mark by which we judge theexcellence of an objective vision of nature, thesummit from which we hang a variety ofsecondary movements, either mere precursors orheirs. For this reason it is vital to identify thedifferent movements that bloomed during thecentury and the remarkable variety of approachesto landscape painting by artists of manycontrasting styles.

3. On making a circuit of 19thcentury landscapepainting one notices that Impressionist works,which favoured direct perception, are no morefaithful to human sight nor nearer a spontaneousperception of external reality than other styles;above all, they achieve the debunking alreadyinitiated during the first half of the century oftraditional codes of representation, replacing themwith a stronger focus on the materials with whichthe painter works: coloured paste, brushes,surface of the canvas, and the act of painting itself:gestures, marks and traces.

the offerings of prosaic surroundings and theeveryday world.Underline the fact that beauty and the sublime arenot simply two degrees on the same aestheticpleasure scale, as they cannot be compared:indeed, according to Kant, whilst natural beauty isa category of understanding, the sublime onlypertains to the imagination. One cannot even saythat they are opposed, since the sublime is withoutmeasure or form. It is the infinite, the colossal, theunbound, and in this way it runs counter to onesreason (or rather, reason runs counter to it,especially in the field of mathematics). One canillustrate the incompatibility of the two notions byfocusing on the object, for whilst there may bebeautiful objects, there can be no such thing as asublime object; which is precisely why landscapewas chosen as the medium through which thesublime was expressed.

List of artworksN.B.: in the case of guided tours, this list ofartworks is indicative. The guide leading thegroup of pupils is free to choose the works whichillustrate their demonstration.

Gustave Courbet: LAtelier (The Studio), 1850-51 Paul Huet: Le Gouffre (The Abyss), 1861 Gustave Courbet: La Vague (The Wave), 1869 Camille Corot: Une matine; la danse desnymphes (One Morning; The Dance of Nymphs),1850 Camille Corot: La Clairire; souvenir de Ville-dAvray (The Clearing; Souvenir of Ville-dAvray),1872 Thodore Rousseau: Une avenue; fort de LIsle-Adam (An Avenu; Forest of LIsle-Adam), 1849 Eugne Boudin: Baigneurs sur la plage deTrouville (Bathers on the Beach in Trouville),1869 Charles-Franois Daubigny: La Neige (TheSnow),1873 Claude Monet: La Pie (The Magpie), 1868-69 Claude Monet: Grosse mer tretat (Stormy Seaat Etretat), 1868-69 Gustave Courbet: La Falaise dtretat aprslorage (The Cliff at Etretat After the Storm),1870 Claude Monet: Train dans la campagne (Train inthe Countryside),1870 Camille Pissarro: La Moisson Montfoucault(The Harvest in Montfoucault),1876 Claude Monet: Londres, le Parlement: troue desoleil dans le brouillard (London, the Houses ofParliament: shaft of Light in the Fog), 1904 Paul Czanne: Le Pont de Maincy, prs de Melun(The Bridge in Maincy, near Melun),1880 Vincent van Gogh: Chaumes de Cordeville Auvers-sur-Oise (Cordeville Thatch in Auvers-sur-Oise), 1890 Paul Gauguin: Paysage de Bretagne; le moulinDavid (Brittany Landscape; the David Mill) 1894 Paul Srusier: Le Talisman, 1888 Andr Derain: Le Pont de Charing Cross(Charing Cross Bridge), 1906 Maurice de Vlaminck: Coteaux de Rueil (Hillsidesin Rueil)1906 Pierre Bonnard: En barque (In a Bark),1907 Ker-Xavier Roussel: LEnlvement des filles deLeucippe (The Abduction of Leucippes Daughters),1911 Gustav Klimt : Rosiers sous les arbres (Rose PlantsUnder Trees),1905

Bibliography Sylvie Patin, A la campagne, Hazan/RMN, 1986 Limpressionnisme et le paysage franais,catalogue of the exhibition at the Grand-Palais,RMN, 1985 Limpressionnisme et la peinture de plein air1860-1914, Larousse, 1992 Sophie Monneret, Limpressionnisme et sonpoque, Denol, 1978, new edition LaffontBouquins, 1987 Pierre Miquel, Le paysage franais au XIXe sicle;lcole de la nature, La Martinelle, 1975 Kenneth Clark, Lart du paysage, GrardMonfort, 1988 Roland Recht, La lettre de Humboldt, ChristianBourgois, 1989 Henri Focillon, La peinture au XIXe sicle,Flammarion, 1991 Philippe Hamon, La description littraire,Macula, 1991

Before and after the visit

Primary school level

Before the visit

1. Define landscape:- Derived from the word land (territory) the termrefers to the breadth of land nature presents to theobserver.- By extension, it also refers to any pictorialrepresentation or literary description relating tothis observation.Note that the notion of landscape only appearedin the Western world in the 17th century.

2. Show that both definitions are connected; thatour aesthetic response to an actual landscapeHow beautiful! is to a large degree influencedby the history of the artistic landscape.

3. What is a landscape artist?- a painter of landscapes.- a draughtsman who designs gardens and parks.(In Giverny, Claude Monet was both).Why are there no landscape artist sculptors?

4. Point out to the children how many differentkinds of places may be called landscapes: wild(do they still exist?), developed, cultivated, built-up, urban. Differentiate natural attributes fromthose which result from human action; in the lightof this, look at the coexistence in Impressionistpainting of traditional subjects mills, carts:rusticity and modern subjects locomotives,factories: progress and note that the first aremuch more common than the latter.

5. List the different possible activities in alandscape, singling out:- Work: rearing, ploughing, sowing, planting,harvesting, picking, horticulture- Leisure: walking, bathing, rowing, country party,gardening, hunting

6. What distinguishes a landscape painting from amap, a plan or a photograph? Can a painting havea practical use, for instance to find ones way, or tostudy the vegetation?

After the visit

1. In front of a landscape painting (a picture in theclassroom), identify the place, time (dawn,sunset), and season. Teach them to distinguishthe permanent features, at least from a humanperspective: geology, the lie of the land, watercourses, architecture; from ephemera: light,shadows and reflections, mist, thunder storms,rainbows, flowers.

2. Teach the pupils to observe the importance,which will vary according to the painting, given topeople, houses, trees, the sky, clouds, by studyingtheir size and position in relation to thecomposition as a whole.- What is the main subject?- Where is it placed in the painting? (Is it always inthe centre?)- Is the artist near to it or far away?Consider the titles; for instance:Camille Pissarro: La brouette (The Wheelbarrow,1881), La gele blanche (Hoarfrost, 1873), Les toitsrouges (Red Roofs, 1877)

3. Consider the reasons why the formats arealmost always horizontal and not vertical(contrarily to portraits).

4. Is the horizon line visible? At what height is itsituated?

5. Identify the foreground (at the bottom), themiddle ground (in the centre) and the background(at the top). Compare the proximity or distance ofthe different subjects within the landscape:- Which elements help us to identify the differentplanes and evaluate their respective proportions?- Which of the elements divide and which of themconnect (paths, barriers, rivers either parallel orperpendicular to the plane of the painting)?- Can one distinguish as many details in thedifferent parts of the painting? If not, why not?

6. What is the chosen viewpoint: from the ground,at eye-level, from above?How can this factor have an influence on theplacing of the horizon line and the relativequantities shown of ground and sky?

7. Have the pupils paint a fragment of what can beseen from the classroom windows in a schematicway perhaps, as a simple colour chart atdifferent times of the day or year.

8. Have them draw a cloud from memory; thenrepeat the operation choosing a cloud in the sky asa model. Draw it as if it were a portrait, as if itshould not be mistaken for another cloud.

Lower secondary school level

Before the visit

1. Explain the notion of genre in painting:history, mythology, portrait, landscape, still-life, inthe light of their hierarchy according to academiccriteria (possibly drawing a parallel with cinemagenres: comedy, drama, historical reconstruction,western, detective).

2. Define the characteristic features of thelandscape genre and its extreme limits:when the place occupied by humans and theiractions vies with the setting (for instance inEugne Delacroix: Passage dun gu, Fording ariver - 1848) or when the fragment of natureshown is very restrained (for instance in EdouardVuillard: La promenade dans le port, Le Pouliguen- A Walk in the Port 1908), are we still properlyspeaking of a landscape?

3. Talk about the history of landscape paintingbefore the 19thcentury and its significance oftenlinked to the Bible: on the one hand, untamednature, anguish inspiring chaos and terror in theface of hostile forces; and on the other, paradiselost (or irrecoverable), the enclosed garden,bountiful and protective, inspiring security and asense of mastery. Show that the modernity of the Impressionists,even when compared with the Barbizon group,lies in their backing away from representingnature from a moral angle to replace it with aneutrality of vision which had, until then, onlybeen found in study work for landscapes.

4. Analyse the classic rules of composed,landscape painting: the segregation of the planesin space, the studio procedures for theharmonisation of light and distribution of shadowsin graded tones, and the highlighting ofpicturesque and symbolic elements.

5. Present the transformation of physicalgeography caused by industrialisation and thedevelopment of fast transportation, steamboatsand railways, which allowed the development ofout of town bathing spots, excursions to thecountryside and weekend holidays. While avoidingusing artworks as mere illustrations for thepainters aims were not geographical it ispossible to show that Impressionist painters oftenprefer connecting landscapes featuring roads,rivers, railroads, streets and boulevards, choosingsites that are easily accessible, close to paths ofcommunication.

After the visit

1. Study, from the point of view of art, the questionof the representation of space and the integrationof characters, the various ways to suggest depth,the use, or not, of perspective and the spatial roleof colour.

2. Draw a tree: where does one start and how doesone associate trunk, branches and leaves? How didartists like Corot, Pissarro, Van Gogh, Czanne orSrusier suggest, each in his own way, a thickfoliage without painting the leaves one by one?How did they solve the tension between theglobal (the general silhouette, the mass) and thelocal (the particular shape, the distinct units ofthe trees)?

3. At the crossroads between art and naturalsciences: while scientific study is used in theteaching of drawing for human figures (anatomyand morphology), it is neglected in the art oflandscape painting.Chateaubriand: Lettre sur lart du dessin dans lespaysages (1852):The study of botany seems to me useful to thelandscape painter, if only to learn the foliationand how not to give all the leaves of all the treesthe same tone and the same shape.

4. As an emotional and aesthetic experience,landscape is also relevant to literature. At whatpoint does a literary description of nature becomea landscape, or even a picture? Identify thedifference between the processes used by writersand those used by visual arts:- the description introduces a pause, a punctuationin the unfolding of the narration, but continues ina linear direction, retaining the progressivesuccession inherent in writing:Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary (1856) Garnier-Flammarion, p. 268.LEducation sentimentale (1869) Garnier-Flammarion, p. 397 to 400.- the description corresponds to the viewpoint ofone of the characters or of the narrator: Chateaubriand: Mmoires dOutre-Tombe (1841).- the description distinguishes, through the use ofvocabulary, a global overview (panorama: themeadow, the ocean) and precise detail (close-up: the gnarled trunk, the foam of the greatwave) and the connection of words to the thingsthey describe is relative: what is the average sizeof a hill?

Upper secondary school level

Before the visit

1. Measure the gap between image and text,underlining the fact that in literature, nature isalmost always linked with a moral jugement: thecountryside, sane virtuous, and hygienic, is oftencontrasted to the city, licentious, vice-ridden, andcorrupt; lying between the two, the suburbs tendnonetheless to be contaminated by the latter:Guy de Maupassant: La femme de Paul (PaulsWife, 1880); Au printemps (In the Spring,1881)Emile Zola: Thrse Raquin (1867); LAssommoir(The Dram Shop, 1877)There is nothing of this antinomy to be felt inpainting, least of all in the works of theImpressionists who present haymaking in Brittany,a field of poppies and the Boulevard des Capucinesor the Rue Montorgueuil with an equal joy of lightand movement.

2. Since Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the landscape inliterature has been talkative: it has made itself,or rather ourselves, heard, for when naturespeaks, it only echoes our voice. The painterValenciennes already called for the landscapepainter to metaphorically make [nature] talk tothe soul through an action of love, while anotherpainter, Thodore Rousseau, affirmed heendeavoured to hear the voice of trees [] thelanguage of forests.This rhetoric of communion, of the dialoguebetween man and nature, was largely developed inpoetry and literature; one can give as examplesVictor Hugos collection of poems: Les voixintrieures (Inner Voices, 1837) and Stendhals LaChartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma,1839): for Fabrice del Dongo, the hero of the novel,the forests of the Cme lake are those that speakmost to his soul.But later, in a more disenchanted period, on theeve of the First World War, it is incommunicabilitywhich prevails. To Rainer Maria Rilke, in hisEssais sur lart (Essays on Art, 1912), [thelandscape] is a life that is not our life, which doesnot participate in anything of ours, and whichcelebrates its festivities without seeing us andwhich we observe with a certain confusion, likeguests arriving by chance and only being able tospeak another language.

3. In painting, the landscape is more often mute, atleast in the case of the Impressionists: theirpaintings offer pieces of nature, in the glory of themoment, apparently with no other purpose thanthat of pleasing the eye, rejoicing in the fullness ofa sunny atmosphere, expressing the happiness ofthe scene presented by the banks of the Seine orthe Normandy coast while indulgingunrestrainedly in sensations of colour and light.One may wonder why Impressionism, so shockingand scandalous to the viewers of the time whoonly perceived in it splashes of crude colours, laterbecame the archetype of the most harmoniouspainting, the most serene, offering to the world anidyllic vision of absolute plenitude?

A possible answer lies in the easy accessibility of astyle of painting that supposes no prior knowledgeof mythology or literature in order to beunderstood. Once the public is familiar with theuse of light and bright colours and the freetechnique of execution which scorns a meticulousfinish, then these are works which directly addressthe publics hedonistic sensuality, providing theman effortless and quasi-immediate way in.

4 Standing in extreme contrast to the lyricism andpoetry of the landscape are Gustave Flaubertssatire and derision:- On the Barbizon group: Lducation sentimentale(Sentimental Education, 1869), part 3, chapter 1.- and relevant to the Impressionist approach:Bouvard et Pcuchet (1881), Gallimard, coll. Folio,p. 88 and 382.In the Dictionnaire des ides reues, attached to theabove novel, Flaubert wrote under the letter P:Paysages de peinture: toujours des platsdpinards ! (Landscape paintings: always dishesof spinach!).

After the visit

1. The pictorial landscape in the 19th century is theresult of a contemplative approach in which weare given an exterior view (generally that of thecity-dweller) on a domesticated and aestheticisednature.Oscar Wilde: The Decay of Lying in the collectionof essays Intentions (1891):Where she [nature] used to give us Corots andDaubignys, she gives us now exquisite Monets andentrancing Pissarros.The paradox implies that nature imitates art, in sofar as the painting (which includes within itselfreferences to other paintings too) precedes ourvision of nature.This may be illustrated by mentioning the petition,signed in the early 1850s by the Barbizon painters,demanding that the clearing of the Fontainebleauforest be stopped and that the sites of Barbizonand Chailly be protected. Thodore Rousseau usedhis connections with members of parliament tohave a decree passed to protect the site; this wasachieved in 1856. The forest became something ofa historical monument: an artwork derived fromRousseaus, Daubignys and Duprs paintings.One should also mention Claude Monetstransformation of Giverny, in Normandy, fromorchard to pleasure garden from its acquisition in1883 until the painters death in 1926. This garden,with its cherry trees, its water lily pond and itsJapanese wooden bridge, was the sole subject forhis numerous series of Water Lilies; according to acontemporary, Monet is reputed to have said: Mygreatest masterpiece is my garden.

2. Distinguish, from the aesthetic point of view, thenotion of natural beauty from the notion of thesublime: whereas Romanticism in the first half ofthe 19thcentury was searching for the utmostspiritual elevation and using every means to attainit - first among which was imagination Realism,and then Impressionism, preferred to work with

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Presentation Objectives Before and after the visit The visit: list of artworks Bibliography

PresentationTo study the stages in the spectacular rise oflandscape painting throughout the 19thcentury it isimportant to keep in mind the parameters oflandscape painting as a specific genre.

1. What is a landscape?

Whatever its historical and cultural context,painting has very often dealt with the problem ofsetting objects or figures within a space andtherefore has had to address the representation ofdepth. Artists could choose either to create theillusion, using all manner of methods rational orintuitive or, equally, they could choose to ignore it.Over time, representations of places havenevertheless been numerous: partial views ofnatural scenes, fields, meadows, valleys, forests,mountains, in most cases these are merelybackgrounds, stylised to a greater or lesser degree,but believable. The use of the phrase landscape is only reallyjustified when the featured place not only occupiesa central place in the space of the painting bypresenting a view, but above all when, rather thanbeing a mere setting or background, it constitutesthe main subject of the painting.Despite the creation in 1816 of a Prix de Rome forhistorical landscape inspired by Pierre-Henri deValenciennes (whose reform of the Beaux-Artssystem was to lead to its suppression in 1863), theearly 19th century inherited the hierarchy ofgenres established two centuries before byFlibien and set up as the norm by the Acadmieroyale, in which landscape painting is situated justabove still-life but beneath the noble genres(history painting, Genre, portraiture). Barelyrecognised as a specific genre, landscape paintingwas undervalued as it supposedly did not requirethose supreme artistic qualities and moral values:idea, invention, humanity.These criteria were used to establish yet anothertwo-fold hierarchy within the genre itself: withpastoral landscape taking second place to heroiclandscape (historical or mythological). In 1859, inthe chapter of the Salon devoted to landscapepainting, Baudelaire defined landscape, studied forits own sake, as an inferior genre and the sillycult of nature.

2. The expansion of the genrein the 19th century

Following the resurge of interest in nature, whichbecame apparent at the end of the 18th century,and the growing interest in direct observation ofthe surrounding environment, landscape paintingwent through an exceptional development duringthe 19th century, occupying a leading place withinmany artistic movements of this period. Artists,wanting to free themselves of the burden oftradition, abandoned the formal compositions ofparticular events or narratives in order to simplyrepresent pieces of the natural world, identifiedand localised by titles. In his commentary on the1866 Salon, remarking on the growth in plein airpainting constructed partly or entirely on thesubject of nature, the critic Jules Castagnary wroteof the great army of landscape painters.Yet the reasons for this recourse to landscapepainting were as many the artists who took it; theprevalence given to the immediacy of visualsensations and the variations and reflections oflight, gave way, in the last two decades of thecentury, to a new conception of the subject. Itwas no longer considered as mere material to becopied or as a scene to be articulated, but as thestarting point for a more autonomous use ofpictorial means. Colour and brush stroke inparticular were used to construct space, relief andvolumes, soliciting the active participation of theviewer in the figurative interpretation of theartwork.At the same time, the emancipation of paintersfrom pure retinal sensation gave new importanceto the spiritual dimension of landscape painting,manifested through a visionary symbolismsometimes accompanied by a return to Antiquitythrough a revisited mythology.

Objectives1. The aim of the visit is to have the pupils observethat, through the prevalence given to landscapepainting, new conceptions of pictorial practicetook shape which had their sources in a newperception of the world. The development of thisgenre resulted from the artists wanting to teachpeople to look at the world around them byenabling them to recognise it in paintings of actualplaces. Yet a paintings function is always morethan a mere description; it brings into play a seriesof signifiers rooted in the particular pictorialdevice of the artwork. In this respect, realism mayalso be said to be a form of convention, aninterpretation that obeys codes, rather than anexact replica of reality.

2. It is important to avoid presentingImpressionism as the apex of landscape painting,using it as the bench mark by which we judge theexcellence of an objective vision of nature, thesummit from which we hang a variety ofsecondary movements, either mere precursors orheirs. For this reason it is vital to identify thedifferent movements that bloomed during thecentury and the remarkable variety of approachesto landscape painting by artists of manycontrasting styles.

3. On making a circuit of 19thcentury landscapepainting one notices that Impressionist works,which favoured direct perception, are no morefaithful to human sight nor nearer a spontaneousperception of external reality than other styles;above all, they achieve the debunking alreadyinitiated during the first half of the century oftraditional codes of representation, replacing themwith a stronger focus on the materials with whichthe painter works: coloured paste, brushes,surface of the canvas, and the act of painting itself:gestures, marks and traces.

the offerings of prosaic surroundings and theeveryday world.Underline the fact that beauty and the sublime arenot simply two degrees on the same aestheticpleasure scale, as they cannot be compared:indeed, according to Kant, whilst natural beauty isa category of understanding, the sublime onlypertains to the imagination. One cannot even saythat they are opposed, since the sublime is withoutmeasure or form. It is the infinite, the colossal, theunbound, and in this way it runs counter to onesreason (or rather, reason runs counter to it,especially in the field of mathematics). One canillustrate the incompatibility of the two notions byfocusing on the object, for whilst there may bebeautiful objects, there can be no such thing as asublime object; which is precisely why landscapewas chosen as the medium through which thesublime was expressed.

List of artworksN.B.: in the case of guided tours, this list ofartworks is indicative. The guide leading thegroup of pupils is free to choose the works whichillustrate their demonstration.

Gustave Courbet: LAtelier (The Studio), 1850-51 Paul Huet: Le Gouffre (The Abyss), 1861 Gustave Courbet: La Vague (The Wave), 1869 Camille Corot: Une matine; la danse desnymphes (One Morning; The Dance of Nymphs),1850 Camille Corot: La Clairire; souvenir de Ville-dAvray (The Clearing; Souvenir of Ville-dAvray),1872 Thodore Rousseau: Une avenue; fort de LIsle-Adam (An Avenu; Forest of LIsle-Adam), 1849 Eugne Boudin: Baigneurs sur la plage deTrouville (Bathers on the Beach in Trouville),1869 Charles-Franois Daubigny: La Neige (TheSnow),1873 Claude Monet: La Pie (The Magpie), 1868-69 Claude Monet: Grosse mer tretat (Stormy Seaat Etretat), 1868-69 Gustave Courbet: La Falaise dtretat aprslorage (The Cliff at Etretat After the Storm),1870 Claude Monet: Train dans la campagne (Train inthe Countryside),1870 Camille Pissarro: La Moisson Montfoucault(The Harvest in Montfoucault),1876 Claude Monet: Londres, le Parlement: troue desoleil dans le brouillard (London, the Houses ofParliament: shaft of Light in the Fog), 1904 Paul Czanne: Le Pont de Maincy, prs de Melun(The Bridge in Maincy, near Melun),1880 Vincent van Gogh: Chaumes de Cordeville Auvers-sur-Oise (Cordeville Thatch in Auvers-sur-Oise), 1890 Paul Gauguin: Paysage de Bretagne; le moulinDavid (Brittany Landscape; the David Mill) 1894 Paul Srusier: Le Talisman, 1888 Andr Derain: Le Pont de Charing Cross(Charing Cross Bridge), 1906 Maurice de Vlaminck: Coteaux de Rueil (Hillsidesin Rueil)1906 Pierre Bonnard: En barque (In a Bark),1907 Ker-Xavier Roussel: LEnlvement des filles deLeucippe (The Abduction of Leucippes Daughters),1911 Gustav Klimt : Rosiers sous les arbres (Rose PlantsUnder Trees),1905

Bibliography Sylvie Patin, A la campagne, Hazan/RMN, 1986 Limpressionnisme et le paysage franais,catalogue of the exhibition at the Grand-Palais,RMN, 1985 Limpressionnisme et la peinture de plein air1860-1914, Larousse, 1992 Sophie Monneret, Limpressionnisme et sonpoque, Denol, 1978, new edition LaffontBouquins, 1987 Pierre Miquel, Le paysage franais au XIXe sicle;lcole de la nature, La Martinelle, 1975 Kenneth Clark, Lart du paysage, GrardMonfort, 1988 Roland Recht, La lettre de Humboldt, ChristianBourgois, 1989 Henri Focillon, La peinture au XIXe sicle,Flammarion, 1991 Philippe Hamon, La description littraire,Macula, 1991

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La visite : les uvres

13. Paul Gauguin : Paysage de Bretagne ; le Moulin David, 189414. Paul Srusier : Le Talisman, 188815. Gustav Klimt : Rosiers sous les arbres, 1905

there is no breath to disturb the surface of thisdark water which, like a mirror, presents areflection of the bridge which is equallysubstantial. It emanates a feeling of permanencyidentical to that which would be inspired by thenumerous paintings of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire.Czanne preferred isolated subjects to overviews;the span of the site is here very restrained, and thecentral subject of the bridge allows him to developan architecture on the level of the canvas by givingthe drawn line its importance back. But Czanneavoids any paralysis in the movement of his linesby playing on a certain irregularity in thecontours, which are interrupted, only to becontinued further on. The brush strokes do notexactly follow the direction of the representedelements but inscribe an autonomous obliquerhythm, while the green hues develop from adominant emerald, the leaves having been giventhe appearance of mineral splinters.

Vincent van Gogh: Chaumes de Cordeville Auvers-sur-Oise (Cordeville Thatch in Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890)Location: gallery 35

This painting was made during the most freneticand creative period in the artists career, a fewmonths before the tragic end to his short life. VanGogh left Provence after his voluntary sojourn inthe asylum in Saint-Rmy and by this time was inAuvers-sur-Oise, to the North of Paris.The landscape has here been sublimated bypsychic forces: the quiet thatched houses whichcan still be seen in old photographs seem here tobe lifted by some powerful earth tremor whichdilates volumes, causing the roofs to undulate,distorting the small barrier and metamorphosinghills, trees and clouds into dancing torches.Obviously this is not a case, as with the Romantics,of the artist being upset and tormented by thegrandiose landscape; on the contrary, it is he whotorments and inflames everything down to thesmallest hovel and the last cypress tree. All the elements in the landscape unify in thecurving of their outlines marked by freneticsinuous lines, generating whirling rhythms which,like waves, are amplified or crash together;energising the surface of the canvas intoparoxysms. In addition, the pictorial matter isworked in full impasto, in which he has carveddeep furrows in parallel networks.

Paul Gauguin : Paysage de Bretagne ; le MoulinDavid (Brittany Landscape; the David Mill, 1894)Location: gallery 44

Like Czanne and Van Gogh, Gauguin wasconvinced painting should not only interpretretinal sensations, and like Odilon Redon whofound it low-ceilinged, he consideredImpressionism, shallow; thought does not dwellin it. For him, painting meant using simplifiedpictorial means to search beyond appearances fora reality more complete and thought out, a

Introduction

Gustave Courbet: LAtelier (The Studio), 1850-51Location: gallery 7

This is the world which comes to me to have itsportrait painted Courbet declared about thismanifesto-setting realist painting. This may betrue, but using a device not dissimilar to that usedby Diego Velzquez in Las Meninas, Courbetrepresents himself painting neither the peoplegathered in his studio nor even his nude model, onwhom he is turning his back, but a landscape,from memory or imagination, of his nativeFranche-Comt to which he is giving the lasttouches with a flourish. The vivid luminosityemanating from his landscape, contrasting withthe darkness of the studio, is emblematic of theexclusive attention given to light effects bylandscape painters, which led to the magnifiedbrightness of the Impressionists a few years later.Thus, the canvas represented in the centre of thepainting is like a hole in the surface of the canvas,a window opening on the outside, furtheraccentuated by the piece of curtain-like draperycovering the top part of the painted sky. Such apictorial anomaly did not escape EugneDelacroix who wrote in 1851 in his Diary:The only fault [made by Courbet in The Studio] isthat the painting he is working on causesamphibology [is equivocal]: it looks like a realsky in the middle of the painting.

1. The landscapeas an emotional state

Paul Huet : Le Gouffre (The Abyss), 1861Location: gallery 2

This composed landscape testifies to the latesurvival of the Romantic spirit that establishedaffinities between the lyricism of natural elementsand an emotional state often verging on themelancholic, connections that are manifested hereby the metaphor of the abyss; a visual, but alsolinguistic metaphor: one may be said to be aubord du gouffre (on the verge of the abyss),sabmer dans le dsespoir (to be plunged indespair) or to hit rock bottom.There is little plausibility in the presence of suchan abyss in the midst of steep rocks in theimmediate vicinity of such a vast open field,particularly when it is known that Huet madestudies for this painting in the Fontainebleauforest; the result is a terrifying, if somewhataffected and over-dramatised image. The figures should indicate that an accident, acatastrophe has occurred Paul Huet explained,and indeed everything in the painting points tothis; nature is particularly hostile: threateningclouds, anxious birds, trees shaken by the wind,agitated and frightened horses whose instinctivesensitivity to danger is well-known. The handlingis as fiery and nervous as the protagonists horsesand the scaly surface is well adapted to suggest theparticular glow of a stormy sky.

Gustave Courbet : La Vague (The Wave), 1869 Location: gallery 7

In The Studio (1850-51) a real allegory of sevenyears of my life Courbet gives prominent place toa still-life made from Romantic cast-offs: a wide-brimmed hat with black feather, a guitar and adagger; it is hardly surprising then, that he wenton to make several paintings on the eminentlyRomantic theme of a very stormy sea under amenacing sky, the central subject of which is abreaking wave topped with foam. Far from beingmerely anecdotal, here the artist uses natureunleashed to make a rich pictorial work in theblunt colours and greys of the storm, with the aimof transcribing the strength of the elements solid,liquid and gas which he renders with thickscumbled impasto. Rather than using symbolismto express the pangs of a tormented soul, theartists manifest intention is to encourage a quasi-geological sensibility to the swallowing power ofnature. The only evocation here of mankindsfrailty in the face of the force of nature is indicatedby the presence of a sailing boat in the distanceand two small boats lying on their sides on theshore; we are a long way from Gricaults tragicRaft of the Medusa.

2. Landscape as a visible subject

Camille Corot: Une matine ; la danse desnymphes (One Morning; the Dance of Nymphs,1850)Location: gallery 5

Corot demonstrates a vivid and extremelyaccurate sensitivity to the atmosphere of alandscape, to the nuances of light and its softvibrations, but his work retains the mark oftradition (he resided for a long time in Rome),both in the survival of mythological subjects and inthe clear cut distinction between studies onnature and finished studio paintings. Thisdichotomy in his work was to remain a constantthroughout his career, a fact Corot resentedpainfully, writing in 1857, about J.F. Milletspeasant scenes: It is for me a new world in whichI am lost; I belong too much to the old one.In this painting, even though the landscape holds aprominent place it remains nonetheless thebackdrop to an imaginary scene: a bacchanal ofdryads. However, as lyrical heroism was no longera dominant value in 19thcentury bourgeois society,the goddesses are only there to enliven thetheatre-stage of nature. In fact, the painting maybe the result of the combination of two distinctmemories: on one hand that of the gardens of theVilla Farnese in Rome, on the other, that of a balletat the Opera hence the ambiguity of the title, theword matine possibly being an allusion todaytime performances as opposed to soires.

1. Paul Huet : Le Gouffre, 18612. Gustave Courbet : La Vague, 18693. Camille Corot : Une matine ; la danse des nymphes, 18504. Camille Corot : La Clairire ; souvenir de Ville dAvray, 1872

spiritual reality which he named abstraction.Looking at the David Mill, it is easily to see thatthe artists interest no longer lies in the quest forthe changing light, with its ephemeral variationsand iridescent glitters: here nothing moves,everything is stable, unified, definitive.The lines that combine synthetically the verticalsof the houses and trees in the foreground with thesinuous and undulating lines of the meadow,stream and even the barrier, all concur to endowthis Breton subject with the mythical evocation ofa primitive and paradisiacal nature. The oblongforms of the hill correspond to the bumps ofcloud, schematised in the manner of childrensdrawings. Stretching across each of these distinctzones, are tones which are both exalted puregreen and emerald, oranges, cobalt blue andmostly arbitrary in their relation to reality.The brush stroke is light, lain along on the weft ofa rough canvas, and is devoid of relief, colourgradation or any indication of shade or variation intexture.

Paul Srusier: Le Talisman (The Talisman, 1888)Location: gallery 48

Painted in Pont-Aven under the direction ofGauguin on the cover of a cigar box which,according to legend, seems to have arisen simplywhilst making comparisons between the size ofsuch boxes this very small painting radicalisedthe approach of the master who was soon toleave for Tahiti in his search for a purifyingprimitivism.The use of vivid colours, completely independentof the actual landscape to which the painting isstill very slightly intended to refer, the extremesimplification of the forms disposed on the flatsurface without any concern for the suggestion ofany depth or relief, lead to a landscape sosynthetically formulated as to have becomeshapeless, according to the artist Maurice Denisfor whom the painting was a revelation, as it wasfor his group of friends: in particular mileBernard, Pierre Bonnard, and douard Vuillard.These painters were soon to call themselves theNabis (prophets in Hebrew) and they wouldnickname Srusiers painting The Talisman, as itssmall size rather suggested some sacred icon.In retrospect, posterity would see in this work themanifesto of pure painting, autonomous andabstract, to be connected with Maurice Denissfamous statement: Remember that a painting,before being a battle horse, a nude woman or anyanecdote, is mainly a flat surface covered withcolours assembled in a certain way, published asearly as 1914, in Thories.

Gustav Klimt: Rosiers sous les arbres (Rose PlantsUnder the Trees, 1905)Location: gallery 60

At first glance, taking in the multiplicity of strokesand juxtaposed tints yellows, greens, blues,mauves one could take this for an Impressionistpainting. Yet this work proceeds from quite a

different set of aesthetics, in which the decorativedominates over the effects of light andatmosphere. The Viennese artist develops theindistinct profusion of greenery in a subtlybalanced combination of naturalism and oversimplicity. The perfectly square surface of thecanvas (all the artists landscapes had the sameformat of 110 x 110 cm) is almost entirelysaturated with the uniformly flat mosaic ofmerging leaves and flowers. The tree tops form adense block, independent of their trunks, yetintegrating rose bushes and filling the canvas tothe very edge; in a space thus overwhelmed, onlythe corners reveal a furtive glimpse of the horizon,just 5 cm from the upper edge of the canvas.The overt ornamentation supplants the verylandscape it obliterates, as if driven by a radicalhorror of emptiness.

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Camille Corot: La Clairire ; souvenir de Ville-dAvray (The Clearing; Souvenir of Ville-dAvray,1872) Location: gallery 5

The artist wrote in 1856: [in representing] anyplace, any object, we should submit ourselves toour first impressions, if we have really beenmoved, the sincerity of our emotions will betransmitted to others. Such declarations as thesehave prompted art historians to consider Corot asone of the most direct precursors ofImpressionism. But whereas Impressionists basetheir work on the immediateness of sensation,Corot, on the contrary, works with reminiscence;the filter between nature and the artwork is nolonger that of invention, but is not yet that of theretina: it is memory.The treatment of the trees in the foreground isblurred, just like visual memories; the leaves arepainted in an airy, velvety and impalpable way.This refreshing vegetal curtain opens on theclearing itself, the sense of depth being suggestedby the contrast of light alone which creates at thesame time, the density of the atmosphere.The landscape is discreetly inhabited by twobeings who are not mentioned in the title: a youngwoman, dressed (and therefore not bathing),whose turned head directs our gaze towards adeer, fleeing in the distance. Only oneanachronistic clue: the bow lying on her lap,provides the key to the scene; she is Diana thehuntress, figured here in the same way as the cowherd in T. Rousseaus painting Une avenue, fort deLIsle-Adam (An Avenue, LIsle-Adam Forest, 1849).Corot seems here to confirm unwillingly thetruthfulness of the German poet FriedrichHlderlins statement when he wrote, inArchipelago (1800), of the dissolution ofmythology in landscape painting, at the momentwhen the gods are leaving the stage. Moreprosaically, Emile Zola, in his first Salon, that of1866, expressed the following wish: If only M.Corot would consent to finally kill off all thenymphs in his woods, and replace them withpeasant womenEight years later, the naturalist critics wish wouldbe granted, in particular in paintings like LeMoulin de Saint-Nicolas-lez-Arras (The Mill inSaint-Nicolas-lez-Arras, 1874).

Thodore Rousseau: Une avenue, fort de LIsle-Adam (An Avenue, LIsle-Adam Forest, 1849)Location: gallery 5

The Barbizon school was named after a locality inthe Fontainebleau forest where a group of painters Thodore Rousseau, Narcisse Diaz de la Pena,Jules Dupr, Charles-Franois Daubigny, andConstant Troyon settled to escape the growingindustrialisation of urban zones. They shared acommon will, to feed their nostalgia for a goldenage with a peaceful, rustic image of nature - agolden age much more recent than that evoked bythe other Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. A degree ofmelancholy remains like a continuous undertone,in their evocations of an idyllic communion with a

it a principle that all his paintings be done entirelyin front of the subject which explains why hiscanvases are generally of a small format. They areinstantaneous notations of coastlines in whichalmost all the space is devoted to the sky.Seaside holidays were a growing fashion at thetime, especially the Normandy coast which hadbecame easily accessible to Parisians thanks to thedevelopment of the railways, but Boudin was lessinterested in the characters, whose silhouettes hepainted in a few quick strokes, than in themovement of the clouds which he seized with atruly meteorological accuracy; like John Constablea few years before, he even made a note of theprecise season, time, and the direction of the wind.Baudelaire, in his Salon of 1859, wrote that thesestudies so faithfully caught what is most fleeting,most elusive in its shape and colour: waves andclouds [].It was indeed as mere studies rather thancompositions, because of their small formats, theirquick execution, and their unfinished quality, thatsome paintings by Boudin were accepted by theSalon for the galleries set aside for sketches.

Claude Monet: Train dans la campagne (Train inthe Countryside, 1870)Location: gallery 18

This small painting, dating from before theeffective birth of the Impressionist movement the first exhibition of the group was only to takeplace four years later is representative of thepreference for the domesticated nature of theParisian West over the wilder nature of thecountryside outside the Paris region; the younggeneration of plein air painters set their easels infront of a manmade, gardenlike nature, in a word,an aestheticised nature.In spite of the remark the critic Jules Champfleurymade in his manifesto Le Ralisme published in1857: Isnt the machine, and the role it plays inthe landscape, enough to make a good painting?,the emergence of an industrial subject therailway remains quite allusive. Here, only thewagons are visible, the engine is hidden behind ascreen of greenery and only the steam is visible;the machine, which has not yet conquered in itsstatus as an aesthetic object, is veiled behinddense trees.On the technical level, the time not having yetcome for scattered multiple strokes, the tones of arestricted palette, homogeneous and vividlycontrasted, are placed in large zones according toa simplified distribution of lights and darks, rathersimilar from a tonal point of view to the firstphotographs.

Camille Pissarro: La Moisson Montfoucault(Harvest in Montfoucault, 1876)Location: gallery 32

It is often thought that as far as the Impressionistswere concerned the subject was anecdotal, a merepretext for the study of luminous and colouredsensations, but this is the consequence of amodernist, formalist reading of the movement. A

5. Thodore Rousseau : Une avenue ; fort de LIsle-Adam, 18496. Charles-Franois Daubigny : La Neige, 18737. Eugne Boudin : Baigneurs sur la plage de Trouville, 18698. Claude Monet : Train dans la campagne, 1870

9. Camille Pissarro : La Moisson Montfoucault, 187610. Claude Monet : Londres, le Parlement : troue de soleil

dans le brouillard, 190411. Paul Czanne : Le Pont de Maincy, prs de Melun, 188012. Vincent van Gogh : Chaumes de Cordeville Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890

nature which is bountiful and protective. This work, painted some time before the artistsettled in Barbizon, has no other real subject thanthis calm and silent row of trees where a shaft ofsunlight bathes the peaceful cows in a sweet andgolden warmth. The attention given to theparticular effects of light is not a radical novelty; inhis Salon of 1767, Denis Diderot already stated:Didnt you know [] that a landscape in whichthe understanding of light is not of primeimportance is a piece of bad painting. What doesseem innovative in Rousseaus painting however,is the choice of an unusual light effect observedfor its own sake, to which the artist lends not onlya visual equivalent but engenders sensations ofwarmth and freshness through the use of clearlydistinct and very light tones, in the division of thesurface, through zones of shadows and through abrushstroke fragmented in multiple deposits ofpigments.

Charles-Franois Daubigny: La Neige (Snow,1873)location: gallery 6

The large stretch of landscape visible on this long,horizontal painting which recalls panoramas,indicates the desire, inherited from romanticism,to master space as a whole whilst striving tocommunicate a sense of the infinite in thenecessarily finite limits of a painting (in thismatter, see also: Antoine Chintreuil, Lespace,Space, 1869). In the Romantic era, the artistsobjective had been to create a state of communionwith the sublime aspect of nature through a visualshock, which was intended to induce in the vieweran impulse of empathy (a capacity to feel thesentiments of someone else through identificationrather than through mere understanding), apowerful emotion before the hugeness of thelandscape.Such is not really the case here, as there is noremaining pathos, no fury of the elements; the skyis not menacing, the ravens themselves are in noway threatening, nor - unlike Van Goghs do theyconvey any morbid allusions. No edifyingstatement, no anecdote, is to be found in thispainting which simply offers the view of a desolatewinter landscape. The main interest lies in theway of rendering an opaque and muffled light,together with the roughness of a winter blanketwith a thick impasto of white, scraped with a knife,under the pale reddish glow of a freezing sunset,in counterpoint to the network of bare black trees,on whose branches the ravens are gathering.

3. The landscapeas light phenomenon

Eugne Boudin: Baigneurs sur la plage deTrouville (Bathers on the Beach at Trouville, 1869)Location: gallery 16

Boudin, the painter of Honfleur and itssurroundings, with whom the young Monetdiscovered the charms of plein air painting, made

closer examination soon reveals they deliberatelyset their easels in places which enabled them toproject a rather traditional vision of a picturesque,rural France, protected from the effects ofindustrialisation; a harmonious, serenecountryside, full of peace.Pissarros freshness of execution, quick withoutbeing nervous, the unfinished quality leaving barecanvas showing in many places in particular inthe clouds results from a desire to let the ochre-pink canvas play a role as texture and colour inthe painting. This technique, applied to such acommonplace, everyday scene bears witness to astate of innocence of seeing which would soonbe lost for ever.

Claude Monet: Londres, le Parlement: troue desoleil dans le brouillard (London, the Houses ofParliament: shaft of Light in the Fog, 1904)Location: gallery 39

Confronted with the legendary British weather andhaving William Turners paintings in mind, Monetcarried two fundamental principles ofImpressionist technique to their ultimateconclusion: the dissolution of forms and volumesinto the atmosphere, and the reciprocal exaltationof complementary colours. By the exclusive use ofa simultaneous play of oranges and blues, Monetrendered palpable the density of the air, filled withits mist of light diffracting water droplets.Considering the iridescence of the sunlight andthe evanescence of the architecture within such anethereal atmosphere, the realism of theImpressionist approach seems to consist of fidelityto optical sensation rather than to the subject. Butas the impressionists had no other creed than topaint truthfully, they were in fact sparking offthe process of Paintings future liberation from anobligation to imitate nature by founding theautonomy of pictorial means. The impact ofImpressionism on the generations to come,resided in the way it transgressed its initialprogramme (to paint the reality of sensation) andliberated brushstroke and colour from theirreference to the real subject.

4. Landscape as the constructionof the surface of the painting

Paul Czanne: Le Pont de Maincy, prs de Melun(The Bridge in Maincy, near Melun, 1880)Location: gallery 36

Born in Aix-en-Provence, the painter consideredthat sensation, far from being limited to the retina,was an essential part in the activity of the brain;accordingly, the artist is the conscience of thelandscape and the painting is the transposition ofa quality in the individual as much as it is of thethings it represents. This is why Czannereproached Monet for being no more than an eye,and why the ephemeral quality of luminousphenomena was alien to his sensibility. Only thesolid and permanent interested him, as is attestedin this landscape of absolute immobility: Here,

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13. Paul Gauguin : Paysage de Bretagne ; le Moulin David, 189414. Paul Srusier : Le Talisman, 188815. Gustav Klimt : Rosiers sous les arbres, 1905

there is no breath to disturb the surface of thisdark water which, like a mirror, presents areflection of the bridge which is equallysubstantial. It emanates a feeling of permanencyidentical to that which would be inspired by thenumerous paintings of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire.Czanne preferred isolated subjects to overviews;the span of the site is here very restrained, and thecentral subject of the bridge allows him to developan architecture on the level of the canvas by givingthe drawn line its importance back. But Czanneavoids any paralysis in the movement of his linesby playing on a certain irregularity in thecontours, which are interrupted, only to becontinued further on. The brush strokes do notexactly follow the direction of the representedelements but inscribe an autonomous obliquerhythm, while the green hues develop from adominant emerald, the leaves having been giventhe appearance of mineral splinters.

Vincent van Gogh: Chaumes de Cordeville Auvers-sur-Oise (Cordeville Thatch in Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890)Location: gallery 35

This painting was made during the most freneticand creative period in the artists career, a fewmonths before the tragic end to his short life. VanGogh left Provence after his voluntary sojourn inthe asylum in Saint-Rmy and by this time was inAuvers-sur-Oise, to the North of Paris.The landscape has here been sublimated bypsychic forces: the quiet thatched houses whichcan still be seen in old photographs seem here tobe lifted by some powerful earth tremor whichdilates volumes, causing the roofs to undulate,distorting the small barrier and metamorphosinghills, trees and clouds into dancing torches.Obviously this is not a case, as with the Romantics,of the artist being upset and tormented by thegrandiose landscape; on the contrary, it is he whotorments and inflames everything down to thesmallest hovel and the last cypress tree. All the elements in the landscape unify in thecurving of their outlines marked by freneticsinuous lines, generating whirling rhythms which,like waves, are amplified or crash together;energising the surface of the canvas intoparoxysms. In addition, the pictorial matter isworked in full impasto, in which he has carveddeep furrows in parallel networks.

Paul Gauguin : Paysage de Bretagne ; le MoulinDavid (Brittany Landscape; the David Mill, 1894)Location: gallery 44

Like Czanne and Van Gogh, Gauguin wasconvinced painting should not only interpretretinal sensations, and like Odilon Redon whofound it low-ceilinged, he consideredImpressionism, shallow; thought does not dwellin it. For him, painting meant using simplifiedpictorial means to search beyond appearances fora reality more complete and thought out, a

Introduction

Gustave Courbet: LAtelier (The Studio), 1850-51Location: gallery 7

This is the world which comes to me to have itsportrait painted Courbet declared about thismanifesto-setting realist painting. This may betrue, but using a device not dissimilar to that usedby Diego Velzquez in Las Meninas, Courbetrepresents himself painting neither the peoplegathered in his studio nor even his nude model, onwhom he is turning his back, but a landscape,from memory or imagination, of his nativeFranche-Comt to which he is giving the lasttouches with a flourish. The vivid luminosityemanating from his landscape, contrasting withthe darkness of the studio, is emblematic of theexclusive attention given to light effects bylandscape painters, which led to the magnifiedbrightness of the Impressionists a few years later.Thus, the canvas represented in the centre of thepainting is like a hole in the surface of the canvas,a window opening on the outside, furtheraccentuated by the piece of curtain-like draperycovering the top part of the painted sky. Such apictorial anomaly did not escape EugneDelacroix who wrote in 1851 in his Diary:The only fault [made by Courbet in The Studio] isthat the painting he is working on causesamphibology [is equivocal]: it looks like a realsky in the middle of the painting.

1. The landscapeas an emotional state

Paul Huet : Le Gouffre (The Abyss), 1861Location: gallery 2

This composed landscape testifies to the latesurvival of the Romantic spirit that establishedaffinities between the lyricism of natural elementsand an emotional state often verging on themelancholic, connections that are manifested hereby the metaphor of the abyss; a visual, but alsolinguistic metaphor: one may be said to be aubord du gouffre (on the verge of the abyss),sabmer dans le dsespoir (to be plunged indespair) or to hit rock bottom.There is little plausibility in the presence of suchan abyss in the midst of steep rocks in theimmediate vicinity of such a vast open field,particularly when it is known that Huet madestudies for this painting in the Fontainebleauforest; the result is a terrifying, if somewhataffected and over-dramatised image. The figures should indicate that an accident, acatastrophe has occurred Paul Huet explained,and indeed everything in the painting points tothis; nature is particularly hostile: threateningclouds, anxious birds, trees shaken by the wind,agitated and frightened horses whose instinctivesensitivity to danger is well-known. The handlingis as fiery and nervous as the protagonists horsesand the scaly surface is well adapted to suggest theparticular glow of a stormy sky.

Gustave Courbet : La Vague (The Wave), 1869 Location: gallery 7

In The Studio (1850-51) a real allegory of sevenyears of my life Courbet gives prominent place toa still-life made from Romantic cast-offs: a wide-brimmed hat with black feather, a guitar and adagger; it is hardly surprising then, that he wenton to make several paintings on the eminentlyRomantic theme of a very stormy sea under amenacing sky, the central subject of which is abreaking wave topped with foam. Far from beingmerely anecdotal, here the artist uses natureunleashed to make a rich pictorial work in theblunt colours and greys of the storm, with the aimof transcribing the strength of the elements solid,liquid and gas which he renders with thickscumbled impasto. Rather than using symbolismto express the pangs of a tormented soul, theartists manifest intention is to encourage a quasi-geological sensibility to the swallowing power ofnature. The only evocation here of mankindsfrailty in the face of the force of nature is indicatedby the presence of a sailing boat in the distanceand two small boats lying on their sides on theshore; we are a long way from Gricaults tragicRaft of the Medusa.

2. Landscape as a visible subject

Camille Corot: Une matine ; la danse desnymphes (One Morning; the Dance of Nymphs,1850)Location: gallery 5

Corot demonstrates a vivid and extremelyaccurate sensitivity to the atmosphere of alandscape, to the nuances of light and its softvibrations, but his work retains the mark oftradition (he resided for a long time in Rome),both in the survival of mythological subjects and inthe clear cut distinction between studies onnature and finished studio paintings. Thisdichotomy in his work was to remain a constantthroughout his career, a fact Corot resentedpainfully, writing in 1857, about J.F. Milletspeasant scenes: It is for me a new world in whichI am lost; I belong too much to the old one.In this painting, even though the landscape holds aprominent place it remains nonetheless thebackdrop to an imaginary scene: a bacchanal ofdryads. However, as lyrical heroism was no longera dominant value in 19thcentury bourgeois society,the goddesses are only there to enliven thetheatre-stage of nature. In fact, the painting maybe the result of the combination of two distinctmemories: on one hand that of the gardens of theVilla Farnese in Rome, on the other, that of a balletat the Opera hence the ambiguity of the title, theword matine possibly being an allusion todaytime performances as opposed to soires.

1. Paul Huet : Le Gouffre, 18612. Gustave Courbet : La Vague, 18693. Camille Corot : Une matine ; la danse des nymphes, 18504. Camille Corot : La Clairire ; souvenir de Ville dAvray, 1872

spiritual reality which he named a

landscape

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