A Study of Rocks and Trees, Fontainebleau

A Study of Rocks and Trees, Fontainebleau, from 1829 and now at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg, is an exceptionally early Rousseau — he was nineteen — and documents his very first engagement with the Fontainebleau forest that would eventually define his entire career. The forest of Fontainebleau, with its distinctive sandstone boulder formations emerging from among ancient oak and beech trees, was already attracting painters from Paris in the 1820s, and young Rousseau was among the first wave of naturalist painters to engage with it systematically. This study, focusing on the combination of rock and tree that was the forest's most characteristic visual element, shows the formation of his characteristic subject matter at its earliest moment. The Strasbourg museum's collection provides this early study with a context of French art history that honors the formation of major painters' foundational subjects.

As an outdoor study from 1829, the canvas shows Rousseau's earliest technique: attentive, slightly uncertain, working to record the complex forms of rocks and vegetation with the precision of a young naturalist. Brushwork is detailed and careful, without the confident summary of his later work.