In 1830, eighteen-year-old Théodore Rousseau left Paris to paint Auvergne (now known as Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes), which lies east of central France. Rousseau was a part of the Barbizon School (even considered a leader by some), a group of young artists who often rejected Impressionism and focused on landscape and naturalistic painting of meadows and forests. This emerged after the 1830s July Revolution, when they took John Constable’s views on naturalism and used them as inspiration to paint nature as they saw it. The Fontainebleau forest drew many artists there, for its serenity and artistic freedom (including Claude Monet and Corot). Another place that drew artists for its naturalistic beauty was Auvergne. Auvergne had a rare beauty to it, a mystic wilness that was rough and sharp. Perhaps its wild nature is what drew Rousseau there. In Auvergne, he painted many works, including this one. Other artists called Auvregne a place ravaged with “half-savages” and a “turbulent force of nature that has remained much like it was at the beginning of the world.” They would either romanticize it or make it too bold and dynamic. With Rousseau, we see a natural way he could find a balance. Rousseau was seen as a threat by the traditional Impressionists, which is why, after 1830-40s, his paintings and works rarely appeared in the Paris Salons. Unlike Corot and Delacroix, Rousseau didn’t idealise the subjects in his painting and was more definitive. Unlike Courbet, the depth and surety in Rousseau’s work carried a more mysterious permanence. This art, this skill, came only because of his love for the wild, for nature. He doesn’t neglect the fact that humans are present in this state of pure being in nature, yet nature is portrayed as something that still triumphs and his presence is known. He didn’t simply see nature but understood it deep within his soul. “I also heard the voices of trees… this whole world of flora lives as deaf-mutes whose signs I divined and whose passions I uncovered; I wanted to talk with them and to be able to tell myself, by this other language—painting—that I had put my finger on the secret of their majesty.” (Quoted by Rousseau).
This is not a sublime view of nature painted from a safe distance. It is a study of the experience of being within a landscape, of feeling its dampness and hearing its noise. Painted on small, portable paper and then laid down on canvas, it has the feel of a direct encounter. The famous "refusé" was not yet thirty years from Rousseau's decades of exile from the Salon. But here, in this small, vibrant study, we already see the future leader of the Barbizon school. He has already learned to paint the raw, untamed earth, not as a backdrop, but as the true subject. The bridge does not conquer the stream, it simply crosses it. And we, the viewers, are left on the bank, awed by the sheer, wet presence of a world that has no need of us.
