This week, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek opens its major Autumn exhibition Théodore Rousseau: Unruly Nature, which runs until 8 January 2017. This large-scale exhibition is the first major show of Théodore Rousseau's work ever in Scandinavia and the first in Europe since a 1967 retrospective at the Louvre. The show explores the mid-19th century French painter (1812-1867) as one of the great innovators of landscape painting, whose daring brush strokes and dawning abstraction anticipated the Impressionists and subsequent generations of French painters.
As an unruly artist, Théodore Rousseau was both admired and hated in his time. His realistic and romantic approach to art made him known as ‘Le Grand Refusé’ when he decided in 1841 to boycott the uppermost tier of the official art scene in France. However, Rousseau soon made his comeback, casting himself as a heroic martyr, who not only conquered the art scene, but also won a seat on the Salon jury. His works were rapidly sold at dizzying prices for museums and private collectors.
Covering two floors and featuring 56 paintings, the retrospective focuses on the technical side of the artist’s extremely skilled works. Classically trained, Rousseau did not follow any rules in painting and was using all kinds of different media, graphics and colors. The exhibition is presented with no labels in order to see the pure development of his skills - an aesthetic pleasure!
The exhibition traveled from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles:
"Engrossing… Rousseau’s landscapes, often melancholic, represent something marvelous, remote and slowly disappearing from consciousness." LA Times, June 2016.
"Théodore Rousseau ranks high on the list of underappreciated 19th-century European painters. A mystic who thought trees spoke to him, and a materialist prone to unorthodox mixtures of media on canvas, panel and paper. […] Not interested in the human figure, Rousseau attended to nature’s textures and moods, zeroing in on details of leaves and bark, while using light and weather to render nature as a source of terror and contemplation." New York Times, June 2016.
Théodore Rousseau: Unruly Nature
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek | Copenhagen
Curated by Line Clausen Pederson
13 October 2016 - 8 January 2017
As an unruly artist, Théodore Rousseau was both admired and hated in his time. His realistic and romantic approach to art made him known as ‘Le Grand Refusé’ when he decided in 1841 to boycott the uppermost tier of the official art scene in France. However, Rousseau soon made his comeback, casting himself as a heroic martyr, who not only conquered the art scene, but also won a seat on the Salon jury. His works were rapidly sold at dizzying prices for museums and private collectors.
Covering two floors and featuring 56 paintings, the retrospective focuses on the technical side of the artist’s extremely skilled works. Classically trained, Rousseau did not follow any rules in painting and was using all kinds of different media, graphics and colors. The exhibition is presented with no labels in order to see the pure development of his skills - an aesthetic pleasure!
The exhibition traveled from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles:
"Engrossing… Rousseau’s landscapes, often melancholic, represent something marvelous, remote and slowly disappearing from consciousness." LA Times, June 2016.
"Théodore Rousseau ranks high on the list of underappreciated 19th-century European painters. A mystic who thought trees spoke to him, and a materialist prone to unorthodox mixtures of media on canvas, panel and paper. […] Not interested in the human figure, Rousseau attended to nature’s textures and moods, zeroing in on details of leaves and bark, while using light and weather to render nature as a source of terror and contemplation." New York Times, June 2016.
Théodore Rousseau: Unruly Nature
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek | Copenhagen
Curated by Line Clausen Pederson
13 October 2016 - 8 January 2017
