folleto - Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

Claude Monet
El roble Bodmer, bosque
de Fontainebleau, 1865
The Bodmer Oak,
Fontainebleau Forest
Nueva York, The
Metropolitan Museum
of Art, donación de
Sam Salz y legado
de Julia W. Emmons,
por intercambio, 1964
TREES AND PLANTS
The practice of executing open-air studies of the finest and most picturesque
trees and plants became widespread in late 18th-century Italy. Additionally,
the work of the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus sparked an interest
in botany that spread rapidly throughout the English-speaking world.
However, it was in early 19th-century France that this type of study became
widespread, as works entered for the Grand Prix de Rome de paysage
historique, created in 1817, required a great deal of preparation. For
the Barbizon painters, some years later, trees became silent protagonists
of the landscape. In the early 1860s the Impressionists also painted trees
in the Forest of Fontainebleau, but in contrast to the Romantic interest in
the sentiments transmitted by great oaks and beeches, artists like Monet
focused on the visual sensations of light as it filters through leaves. Studies
of trees took on an essentially expressive character in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.