Theodore Robinson

(1852-1896)

Barbizon 16 1/8 x 12 3/4in (41 x 32.4cm)

Footnotes

Provenance
Terry De Lapp Gallery, Los Angeles, California.
Acquired by the late owners from the above, December 28, 1973.

Exhibited
Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, American Art From Los Angeles Collections, May 7-June 30, 1974.

Barbizon by Theodore Robinson is a rare work from a period in the artist's career when he was influenced by the Barbizon School's tradition, before fully embracing the techniques of French Impressionism that he would later garner from the Giverny artist's colony. Although his career was cut short by an acute asthma attack in 1896 at the age of forty-four, Robinson produced a small yet diverse oeuvre ranging in subject matter. The effects of light on a rural landscape would remain a source of inspiration throughout the artist's travels in the United States and France. In Barbizon, Robinson utilizes a sophisticated, tonal color palette with broad, textured brushwork, and a composition predominantly focused on a foreground of fields, to create a fresh approach to landscape painting that also served as an homage to the school of artists who came before him in the French village of Barbizon.

Robinson, born in 1852 into a Methodist-Episcopal family, excelled in his early education in penmanship and gained notoriety for his sketching at the Evansville Seminary in Evansville, Wisconsin. His exactness would translate into a remarkable artistic vision and painterly technique. Robinson moved to Chicago in 1869 to study art, but shortly thereafter was forced to move to Denver due to his chronic, debilitating asthma. Despite this set back, he resumed his studies in Chicago before enrolling at the National Academy of Design in New York in 1874. It was during this time that Robinson was active in the New York art scene and helped found the Arts Students League. Like many ambitious American artists of his generation, Robinson went to Paris in 1876 to study under Carolous Duran (1837-1917) and later under Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904). It was at Duran's atelier where Robinson met John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) among other artists, and he was first exposed to the French style of Impressionism.

First visiting in 1877, Robinson spent summers in the village of Grèz-sur-Loing, a gathering spot for American artists working in the French Barbizon style. An ardent admirer of the works of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), Charles-François Daubigny (1817-1878), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), and other painters acknowledged as part of this school, Robinson made periodic excursions into the surrounding countryside to paint in their footsteps. Barbizon was likely painted in the summer of 1884 and is one of several works that Robinson painted of Barbizon, France—the town for which this movement of art was named. The Barbizon School typically worked in tonal color palettes and loose brushwork to create softened forms, which are all stylistic techniques that Robinson employed in the present work.

It would only be a few years later in 1887, when Robinson's personal association with Claude Monet (1840-1926) began at Giverny and that he would fully embrace French Impressionism. Robinson's approach to Impressionism would have significant influence on other American artists and his works were recognized by collectors, critics and dealers for their superior quality and originality. The period of heightened inspiration that Robinson experienced in France in the early-1880s resulted in pivotal works like Barbizon that would continue to inform his mature Impressionist style.