Rocks in the Forest of Fontainebleau
1860/1865
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 46 x 59 cm (18 1/8 x 23 1/4 in.) framed: 65.4 x 78.7 cm (25 3/4 x 31 in.)
Classification
Painting
Department
CF
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Chester Dale Collection
Accession Number
1963.10.110
Art Historical Context
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s *Rocks in the Forest of Fontainebleau* captures a quiet corner of the famed French woodland that drew generations of artists in the nineteenth century. Painted in oil on canvas between 1860 and 1865, the work measures just 46 by 59 centimeters, inviting close viewing of its rocky outcrops and filtered light. Corot, a leading figure of the Barbizon circle, used the medium’s rich tonal range to suggest both the solidity of stone and the softness of foliage, creating an atmosphere that feels both observed and gently poetic. Fontainebleau’s ancient trees and dramatic...
About the Artist
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, born on July 16, 1796, in Paris to a prosperous bourgeois family—his father a former wig-maker turned draper and his mother a successful milliner—was initially apprenticed in the textile trade but pursued art from his mid-twenties with family support. He studied under the neoclassical landscapist Achille Etna Michallon in 1821–1822, who taught him to sketch outdoors in...