Entrance to the Park at Saint-Cloud
c. 1802
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
34.6 × 28.3 cm (13 5/8 × 11 1/4 in.); Framed: 48.3 × 41.3 × 10.2 cm (19 × 16 1/4 × 4 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
61642
Art Historical Context
Jean Victor Bertin's *Entrance to the Park at-Cloud* (c. 1802) captures a serene moment at one of France's most celebrated landscaped gardens, just west of Paris. Painted during the early years of Napoleon's Consulate—a time of political stabilization the French Revolution—this small on canvas reflects the neoclassical ideals of order, harmony, and idealized nature that Bertin championed. As a leading French landscapist trained under Jacques-Louis David, Bertin classical composition with romantic sensitivity to light and atmosphere, evoking the grandeur of 17th-century masters like Claude Lorr...
About the Artist
Jean Victor Bertin · 1775–1842
Jean-Victor Bertin (1767–1842) was a leading French neoclassical landscape painter whose meticulous classical compositions bridged the grandeur of historical landscapes with emerging plein air naturalism. Born in Paris on March 20, 1767, to a master wig-maker, Bertin entered the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1785 at age eighteen as a pupil of history painter Gabriel-François Doyen...