While Michel Bouquet’s paintings and prints may at first seem to fit neatly into the landscape traditions of the contemporary group of painters who gathered around the forest of Fontainebleau, his paintings differ significantly from them. Théodore Rousseau, Jules Dupré and Narcisse-Virgile de la Peña, for
example, focused on the timeless atmospheric effects of shifting clouds and flickering foliage. While Bouquet was equally adept at conveying the mood of the landscape, his subject matter is instead often narrative and nostalgic in nature. In this scene, for example, the costume of the hunters suggests a moment from centuries past, perhaps even a journey to distant England or Scotland, where the painter had often visited. Together with the rhetorical gestures of the central figures, and the supporting members of the party—including the animals—Bouquet seems to present an episode from the story of these traveling hunters.
Details
- Artist Name: Michel Bouquet (French, 1807-1890)
- Title: Woodland Scene with Hunters
- Date: c.1865
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 16-1/4 x 22-1/2 in. (41.2 x 57.2 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1983.05.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
William Wilson Corcoran, gift 10 May 1869 to;
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (sale, New York, Sotheby's, 3 May 1979, lot 37, to);
The Norton Simon Foundation.
[on loan]
- Washington D.C. , Renwick Gallery, 1971 to 1979
Images of the Landscape, Barbizon and Impressionist Paintings from the Permanent Collection
- Norton Simon Museum, 1987-07-02 to 1989-10-29
- Catalogue of the Paintings in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1915, no. 208, as Landscape
- The Corcoran Gallery of Art Illustrated Handbook of Painitngs, Sculpture and other Art Objects (Exclusive of The W. A. Clark Collection), 1939, no. 29, as Halt of Hunters at Fountainebleau
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 1596 p. 425
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