Theodore Rousseau

Happy Birthday Theodore Rousseau!! French landscape painter, born in 1812, Rousseau began painting nature at age 15. He was friends with Millet and Diaz and greatly influenced by the Dutch masters. He became the leader of the Barbizon School a group of landscape painters who attempted a naturalistic study of nature. Like the Impressionists to follow, he painted a gorgeous luminescent light, symbolic in purpose, rather than naturalistic. His intensity is evident in the contrasting tones in Lowland Marsh.