Théodore FOURMOIS (1814–1871)

THÉODORE FOURMOIS — Sous-bois, 1854

With its massive trunks, scattered boulders and luminous opening breaking through the density of the forest, Sous-bois, painted in the Dauphiné in 1854, places Fourmois remarkably close to the contemporary landscapes of Théodore Rousseau, Narcisse Diaz de la Peña, Charles-François Daubigny and the other painters associated with Barbizon. These artists were exploring the same apparently unexceptional motifs at exactly the same moment, rejecting the composed grandeur of academic landscape in favour of intimate fragments of nature encountered for their own sake. Fourmois' woodland is similarly without conventional incident: rocks, trees, shadow and an irregular orée become sufficient subject, while remarkably loose, thinly dragged paint allows light to emerge through broken touches and the warm ground showing through. Such freedom did not escape his contemporaries. Introducing Fourmois' posthumous studio sale in 1872, Jules de Brauwere called him “incontestablement le meilleur paysagiste de notre école” and characterised his response to nature as essentially analytical: his “nature rêveuse, un peu sauvage” led him to observe its individual parts before arriving at the harmony of the whole. Sous-bois makes that judgement tangible: closely observed nature dissolves without ever losing its sense of place, placing Fourmois in a strikingly contemporary dialogue with Barbizon rather than merely in its wake.