Painter Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867) made nature his main motif, his world, and his refuge. Leader of the artists' colony that frequented the village of Barbizon and the Fontainebleau forest, Rousseau spent long hours wandering the forest alone, sketching on the spot before producing his final works in his studio.

Both a romantic and a realist, Rousseau aspired to capture the world's harmony by mixing his soul with it. He blurred the boundaries between painting, drawing, sketching, and finished work. He experimented, adding matter and tirelessly retouching his canvases, going so far as to overload them to bring out the life of the forests. As Baudelaire wrote, he was a "naturalist constantly drawn towards the ideal". He played a fundamental role in establishing a new French school of landscape painting in the mid-nineteenth century, paving the way for Impressionism.

Please join us for a private curator-led tour of the exhibition with Servane Dargnies-de Vitry, curator of Paintings at the Musée d'Orsay.

All invitations are personal and non-transferable.

Image: Théodore Rousseau, Arbre dans la forêt de Fontainebleau, 1840-1849, huile sur papier marouflé sur toile, Victoria and Albert Museum, Londres, Royaume-Uni.