Théodore Rousseau - [Landscape with rocks]

Inscriptions: Lower right estate stamp: TH.R (Lugt 2436); Verso: "Th.R (6) in graphite; LC stamp and "8.86.848.60"
Bradley Collection, no. LC B 1509.
Title, attribution, date, subject, and physical description by Diane de Grazia, 2014.
Michel Schulman, Theodore Rousseau: 1812-1867, Paris, 1997, p. 266, cat. no. 536 (repr.)
Bequest; George Lothrop Bradley; 1919.
Rousseau's first known rock paintings come just before and during his visit to the Auvergne 1830 (reproduced in Michel Schulman, Théodore Rousseau 1812-1867, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 104-105, cat. nos. 64-69). Those works were more circumscribed than this drawing, which uses the rock to offset the landscape in the distance. Rousseau employed the medium of pen and ink less than that of black chalk, but with it, as here, he could express a more fleeting glimpse of nature and greater movement of form, giving the landscape a liveliness not achieved with chalk.
Rousseau Estate sale, 1868 (Lugt 2436)