The Forest of Fontainebleau
1880
Medium
Etching and drypoint in black ink on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 20.2 × 14.8 cm (8 × 5 7/8 in.); Sheet: 22.6 × 17.3 cm (8 15/16 × 6 13/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
8059
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This haunting etching presents an altogether different vision of the Fontainebleau forest than that portrayed by the Barbizon painters.
About the Artist
Rodolphe Bresdin · 1822–1885
Rodolphe Bresdin (1822–1885) was a visionary French draughtsman, engraver, and lithographer whose fantastical imagery captured the empathy of rural poverty and the wild exuberance of the imagination. Born on August 12, 1822, in Montrelais near Le Fresne-sur-Loire in Brittany, he grew up in the Breton countryside amid its bardic folklore traditions before a family dispute left him homeless in Paris...