Landscape with Cottage

Description "Landscape with Cottage" represents a peasant's thatched cottage on a rise. To the left, we see the tip of a steeple and to the right a figure in blue on a white horse, perhaps returning to his cottage as lowering clouds threaten the onset of a storm. Rousseau often chose to represent rustic cottages, informed both by sites he had seen on his travels and his familiarity with the 17th-century Dutch tradition. The location of the site depicted here is uncertain. It is possible that it could be a rocky plain in the forest of Fontainebleau some two miles south-west of Barbizon, which Rousseau represented frequently, particularly in his later years. However, it is also quite possible that Rousseau did not intend here to represent a specific location but rather a more generalized and imaginative interpretation of nature.

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
2/18/1983	Examination	examined for exhibition
1/01/2002	Treatment	examined for exhibition; mounted

Exhibitions

• French Masterworks on Paper. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1992.
• A Connoisseur's Portfolio: Nineteenth-century Drawings and Watercolors in the Walters Art Gallery. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1983.
• Millet and His Barbizon Contemporaries. Keio Department Store, Tokyo. 1985.
• Illuminations: Images of Landscape in France, 1855-1885. The Heckscher Museum, Huntington; The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore; The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis. 1990.
• French Master Drawings. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1997-1998.
• A Discerning Eye: Nineteenth-century Drawings and Watercolors. Academy Art Museum, Easton. 1998-1999.
• Botanical Delights: Floral Motifs in 19th-Century Art. Government House, Annapolis; Strathmore Hall Art Center, North Bethesda; Academy Art Museum, Easton. 1998-1999.
• The Essence of Line: French Drawings from Ingres to Degas. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma. 2005-2006.
• Unruly Nature: The Landscapes of Theodore Rousseau . J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; NY Carlsberg Glyptotek, Kobenhavn. 2016-2017.

Provenance Antoine-François Marmontel (1816-1898), Paris; Sale Antoine Marmontel, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, January 25-26, 1883, lot 255; purchased by William T. Walters (through George A. Lucas as agent), Baltimore, January 26, 1883 [1]; inherited by Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1894; by bequest to Walters Art Museum, 1931. [1] The Diary of George A. Lucas, p. 557.

Inscriptions [Signed] Lower left in iron gall ink: Th Roussseau; [Label] On reverse of frame [since removed, label removed with frame, April 9,1963]: Collection de M. Marmontel, no 488; [Watermark] J Kool/C&W[?]Comp

Credit Acquired by William T. Walters, 1883