A River Landscape
ca. 1845–50
Medium
Oil on wood
Dimensions
16 3/8 x 24 7/8 in. (41.6 x 63.2 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of Richard De Wolfe Brixey, 1943
Accession Number
43.86.7
Tags
Art Historical Context
Théodore Rousseau's *A River Landscape* (ca. 1845–) captures the serene beauty of a winding river flanked by lush foliage and distant boats, embodying the artist's deep reverence for nature. A leading figure in the Barbizon School—a group of 19th-century French painters worked en plein air in the Fontainebleau forest—Rousseau rejected the idealized Romantic landscapes of his time. Instead, he pursued a realistic portrayal of the natural world, emphasizing its untamed vitality during the mid-1800s, a period when industrialization was transforming rural France. Painted in oil on wood, a portabl...
About the Artist
Théodore Rousseau · 1812–1867
Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) was a French landscape painter and the leading figure of the Barbizon School, the group of artists who settled in the village of Barbizon near the Forest of Fontainebleau to paint directly from nature. Born in Paris, he showed precocious talent and studied under the academic painters Charles Rémond and Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, but quickly rejected classical landsca...