Leaving the Forest, Fontainebleau: Setting Sun

Cattle emerge from the gloom of the forest toward a clearing flooded with the last light of a low evening sun, long shadows falling across the pasture. Théodore Rousseau, the central figure of the Barbizon school, painted this monumental view of the Forest of Fontainebleau in 1851, at the height of his fame as the great interpreter of the wilderness around his village on the edge of the woods. The contrast of dark massed trees and glowing sky, and the solemn, searching treatment of the landscape, embody the new seriousness that made him both the painter’s painter of French nature and a prophet of modern landscape art.