Classical Landscape with Figures Drinking by a Fountain

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Classical Landscape with Figures Drinking by a Fountain

Artist Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (French, 1750 - 1819)

Date1806

Dimensions17 3/4 x 28 7/8 in. (45.2 x 73.5 cm)

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, and Gift of Georges Durand-Ruel, by exchange

Object number

2007.37

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 31

Label Text“Elevating Nature above itself carries profound and delightful sensations for the soul,” wrote Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes in his treatise on perspective. Credited with reinvigorating landscape painting, Valenciennes spent much of the period of 1777–1784/85 in and around Rome, where he made numerous drawings and sketches to capture the evanescent effects of nature. “Work in haste, so as to seize Nature as she is,” he would write. The second stage of Valenciennes’s creative process was carried out in the studio, where, relying on his studies as well as his recollections, he would paint what he called his “memory pieces” of Nature perfected: the Ideal landscape. For Valenciennes the oil sketch made on the spot and the finished constructed, ideal landscape were complementary, not contradictory. Classical Landscape with Figures Drinking by a Fountain, exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1806, is an iconic example of French Neoclassical landscape painting. Every element of the painting—light, shadows, color, trees, rocks, architecture, mountains, water, figures, even the arrangement of the billowing clouds—contributes to the pre-conceived harmony of the composition.Published ReferencesChaussard, P.J.B., Le Pausanias Français, état de l'art du dessin en France à l'ouverture du XIXe siècle, le Salon de 1806, Paris, 1808, no. 512, p. 392, repr. p. 390, pl. XX.

Penent, Jean and Luigi Gallo, La nature l'avait créé peintre, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819), Toulouse, Musée Paul Dupuy, 2003, p.255.

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, Toledo, 2009, p. 226, repr. (col.).

En route vers l'impressionnisme: peintures francaises du musee des Beaux-Arts de Reims, Inshosha, 2020, p. 122, fig. 1

Exhibition HistorySalon, Une fontaine d'eau minérale, paysage, 1806, no. 512.

Toulouse, Musée Paul Dupuy, La nature l'avait créé peintre, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819), 19 March - 30 June 2003.

Toledo, Toledo Museum of Art, From the Collection: 300 Years of French Landscape Painting, Jul. 17-Oct. 11, 2015.

Comparative ReferencesSee also Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Elémens de perspective pratique à l'usage des Artistes, suivis de refléxions et conseils à élève sur la peinture et particulièrement sur le genre du paysage, Paris, 1800 [reprinted Geneva 1973]. See also Lionello Venturi, "Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes," ART QUARTERLY, vol. 4 (1941), pp. 89-109. See also Toulouse, Musée Paul-Dupuy, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, 1956 (exh. cat. ed. R. Mesuret). See also Paris, Louvre, Les paysages de Pierre-Henri de valenciennes, 1750-1819, 1976 (dossier exh. on oil sketches; ed. Geneviève Lacambre). [ Rev.: P. Conisbee, BURLINGTON MAGAZINE (May 1976), p. 336.] See also Paula Rea Radisich," Eighteenth century plein-air painting and the Sketches of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes," ART BULLETIN, vol. 64 (March 1982, pp. 98-104. See also Paula R. Radisich,"Eighteenth-Century Landscape Theory and the Work of Pierre Henri de Valenciennes," Ph.D. diss. University of California at Los Angeles [UMI diss. service 1981]. See also Wheelock Whitney, "Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes: An Unpublished Document," BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, vol. 118 (1976), pp. 225-27. See also Philip Conisbee, "Pre-Romantic plein-air painting," ART HISTORY, vol. 2 (Dec. 1979), pp. 413-28. See also New York, Colnaghi (Alan Wintermute, ed.), Claude to Corot, The Development of Landscape Painting in France, 1990 (exh.). essays: -Michael Kitson, "The Seventeenth Century: Claude to Francisque Millet" - Philip Conisbee, "The Eighteenth Century: Watteau to Valenciennes" -Marianne Roland Michel, "Landscape Painting in the Eighteenth Century: Theory, Training and its Place in Academic Doctrine" -Peter Galassi, "The Nineteenth Century: Valenciennes to Corot" See also Peter Galassi, Corot in Italy, New Haven and London: Yale U., 1991. See also Washington, National Gallery of Art; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Saint Louis Museum of Art, In the Light of Italy, Corot and Early Open-Air Painting, 1996-1997 (exh.). essays: -Philip Conisbee, "The Early History of Open-Air Painting." - Sarah Faunce, "Rome and Its Environs: Painters, Travelers, and Site." -Jeremy Strick, "Nature Studied and Nature Remembered: The Oil Sketch in the Theory of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes" -Vincent Pomarède, "Realism and Recollection" See also Bruno Mantura and Geneviève Lacambre, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes 1750-1819. Naples: Electa, 1996. See also Philip Conisbee, "Pierre-Henri de valenciennes," Grove Dictionary of Art, vol. 31 (1996), pp. 816-18. See also Cleveland Museum of Art (D. De Grazia and C.E. Foster eds.), Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000, p. 120. See also Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century, 2000 (exh.), pp. 555-56 [biography and 2 entries of Louvre oil sketches - J. Patrice Marandel] See also Paris, Grand Palais, Mantua, Palazzo Te, Paysages d'Italie, Les peintres du plein air (1780-1830), 2001 (exh.). See also Luigi Gallo, "Sentimento del colore' e 'Colore del sentimento': la riscoperta di Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes nell'opera di Lionello Venturi," STORIA DELL'ARTE vol. 101, Jan.-Apr. 2002. See also Toulouse, Musée Paul Dupuy (cat. by Jean Penent and Luigi Gallo), La nature l'avait créé peintre, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819), 2003 (exh.). See also South Hadley, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Valenciennes, Daubigny, and the Origins of French Landscape, 2004 (exh.). essays: -John Varriano, "Landscape Painting Before Valenciennes" -Wendy M. Watson, Tradition and Innovation: Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes and the Neoclassical Landscape" -Michael Marlais, "Charles-François Daubigny and the Traditions of French Landscape Painting" See also Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, Plein-air painting in Europe, 1780-1850, 2004 (exh.).