View of Mont Blanc c. 1865

oil-on-canvas

abstract painting

water colours

impressionist landscape

possibly oil pastel

carved into stone

earthy tone

underpainting

france

watercolour bleed

watercolour illustration

oil-on-canvas

watercolor

Theodore Rousseau's "View of Mont Blanc" (c. 1865) is a landscape painting depicting a sweeping vista of the French Alps. The painting captures the majestic scale of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Western Europe, as seen from a distance. The composition emphasizes the vastness of the natural world, with the foreground dominated by a winding path and a group of figures dwarfed by the towering mountain. Rousseau's meticulous attention to detail is evident in the rendering of the distant mountains, the lush vegetation, and the clear sky. This painting exemplifies the Barbizon School's focus on naturalistic depictions of the landscape, a movement that emphasized the direct observation of nature.

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minneapolisinstituteofart about 1 year ago

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ViView of Mont Blanc, Seen from La Faucille is one of Théodore Rousseau's most important late works, on which he worked assiduously for four years, and which he finally exhibited publicly at the Paris Salon of 1867. However, until very recently its significance and its location at the MIA were completely overlooked. The picture demonstrates the importance that Rousseau ascribed to panoramic mountain views. The subject's iconographic interest resided also in the fact that ownership of the Savoy region reverted to France, after fifty years, only in 1861 (two years before Rousseau's second Alpine visit) when a treaty signed by France and Italy established the boundary between those countries as passing directly through the summit of Mont Blanc. In addition to this topical iconographic interest, the painting's remarkable light effects and its complex proto-pointillist facture, which confused most critics at the time, evidence an experimental technique that was both unorthodox and prescient. Conservation of this picture was made possible by a generous contribution from Douglas and Mary Olson and Al and Dena Naylor through the Art Champions program. This French Neoclassical revival salon frame—contemporary with the painting —is Gift of the Douglas and Mary Olson Frame Acquisition Fund.