The Valley of Saint-Vincent:
Catalogue entry

Catalogue contents

About the catalogue

Full title: The Valley of Saint-Vincent
Artist: Théodore Rousseau
Inventory number: NG3296
Author: Sarah Herring
Extracted from: The Nineteenth Century French Paintings, Volume 1: The Barbizon School (London, 2019)

Pierre‐Etienne‐Theodore Rousseau 1812–1867
NG 3296
The Valley of Saint‐Vincent

Sarah Herring, 2019

Extracted from:
Sarah Herring, The Nineteenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2019).

1830

Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 18.2 × 32.4 cm

Monogrammed bottom left in red: TH. R¹

Support

The paper support was at some stage mounted on canvas. The canvas is on a fixed strainer rather than stretcher. The stamp of the Degas studio sale is on the top strainer bar, and the following is written in ink: ‘Cantal 1830’.

A strip of paper has been added to the top, to extend the composition (fig. 1). The paper has also been used to ‘complete’ the top right‐hand corner of the original composition, presumed to have been missing. There is a smaller loss at the bottom right‐hand corner. The original (first stage) painted area was 15.8 × 32.4 cm. On the occasion of the work’s first exhibition in June 1867 the dimensions are recorded by Burty as 33 × 16 cm, which is the smaller size, without the extension.² When the picture appeared in the Sensier sale in 1877 the dimensions were recorded in the catalogue as 18 × 32 cm, which is essentially the present size. The addition therefore cannot be original and the composition must have been extended after the artist’s death (in December 1867); it is probable that it was added either by Ourdeki (or Hourquebie, for whom see under Provenance), the purchaser in 1869, or Sensier, possibly to tidy up the top damaged edge while the painting was being mounted on to canvas.

Materials and Technique

The ground on the original sheet of paper is white, consisting purely of lead white, possibly with a tiny amount of earth pigment added. The ground on the extension is quite different in composition. This is off‐white in colour and consists of lead white extended with barium sulphate, calcium sulphate with traces of yellow earth, and black added to soften the bright white. This discrepancy is further evidence that the upper strip of paper was not added by the artist.

Samples from the main paper support have shown that the layers visible on the surface were generally painted directly on top of the ground, without many underlayers. The dark grey‐blue of the top of the mountain on the far right contains lead white mixed with what is probably charcoal, cobalt blue, Prussian blue, yellow earth, and a crimson red lake that gives it the purplish hue. The mid‐green of a forest on the middle range of the hills was created using a complex mixture composed of yellow‐brown and red earth, black, lead white, Naples yellow and vermilion. The thin khaki [page 405] [page 406] green paint layer at the bottom of the painting on the right comprises a very thin underlayer of yellow‐brown earth followed by a layer of dark green composed of ivory black with yellow earth, Prussian blue and Naples yellow mixed in.

**Fig. 1**
Detail from NG 3296 showing the strip laid at the top. © The National Gallery, London

Heat‐bodied linseed oil was identified as the binder in paint from the olive‐green landscape, while heat‐bodied walnut oil was found in paint from the blue‐grey hill.³

The foreground and middle ground are quite thinly painted, so that the white of the ground shows through. The mountains and sky are more fluidly painted with longer brushstrokes. The blue contour of the mountain range has clearly been painted on top of the creamy coloured sky and then the clouds added last, overlapping mountains and sky.

Condition

NG 3296 was cleaned and restored by the National Gallery in 1991. The paint and ground are in good condition, although the paint in the addition is of a substantially different colour. The thinness of paint is due to original technique.

Discussion

The view, looking roughly south‐east and taken early in the morning, leads down through a green valley to a distant chain of mountains. To the left a grassy outcrop of rock is painted in bright green, overlaid with strokes of a darker green. From this cliff there is a vertiginous drop into the valley, which in its sweep towards the menacing line of mountains in the distance fades from green to blue. The valley is criss‐crossed with dark green tree lines, small swirls of the brush conveying the trees. The sky is painted in warm shades of pink and peachy colours, apart from the addition, which is more yellow‐grey in tone, and the clouds surrounding the central peak, which are in blue.

When the painting was exhibited at the Cercle des Arts in 1867 Burty gave it the title ‘Valley of Saint‐Vincent’ and the following description: ‘Its vegetation is bathed in the grey morning mists. At the end the Cantal chain is softly profiled in blue against the sky, reddened by the first fires of the rising sun.’⁴ The village of Saint‐Vincent‐de‐Salers lies in the Vallée du Falgoux, sometimes called the Vallée du Mars after the river Mars running through it. This is one of the valleys radiating out from the foot of Puy Mary, one of the principal summits of the Cantal region and the highest peak visible in NG 3296. To the left lies the small peak of the Puy de Peyre Arse, and the pointed peak to the right of the Puy Mary is Le Col de Redondet. The rocks in the extreme left foreground are the Rochers d’Angouran.⁵ Saint‐Vincent‐de‐Salers lies towards the end nearest the viewer depicted in NG 3296, while the village of Le Falgoux lies approximately half‐way along the valley. The hamlet of La Chaze lies at the far end, at the foot of the Puy Mary. Rousseau has chosen to suppress the villages in this view. The valley is heavily wooded, and on the right‐hand side looking towards Puy Mary lies the Forêt Communale du Falgout, in the Cirque du Falgoux.⁶

In 1830 Rousseau spent several months in the company of Prosper Marilhat (himself originally from the Auvergne) in the Auvergne region. An area of wild, unspoilt nature with significant geological features, the region was a popular destination for painters at this period; for Rousseau’s own development as a painter it was to prove seminal, and it was with a view of the Auvergne that he premiered at the Salon in 1831.⁷ Burty wrote of this trip: Rousseau spent the summer of 1830 in Auvergne. From this moment (the fine drawings which one saw at his posthumous sale proved it), the young master began to feel in possession of himself. His studies of Rocks, on the side of the valley of Saint‐Thiésac (Cantal), his views of the valley of Saint‐Vincent, of the village of Falgout, of the town of Thiers, were of a robust appearance, of an ardent colouring, of a harsh and proud character.⁸ Ary Scheffer (1795–1858), who had been shown the studies by a M. Perrié, a colleague from the National Guard, hung them on the walls of his studio.⁹ Miquel cites NG 3296 among Rousseau’s Auvergne studies that he painted using a telescope, and asserts that he used this from his Auvergne trip onwards to see with more precision the detail of the tones in the distance, and to paint more detailed backgrounds, while being able to stay far from his motif so as to be able to situate it.¹⁰

NG 3296 can be compared to a related view, Valley in the Auvergne Mountains (fig. 2), which appears to show Le Col de Redondet at the centre and the Puy Mary at the left.¹¹ With Rousseau stationed much further down the valley (in [page 407] this case not necessarily the Valley of Saint‐Vincent) the peaks appear much closer. Broadly and generally smoothly painted but in places quite sketchy, it does not feature the tree lines criss‐crossing the valley to the same extent as NG 3296. Additionally, in the Louvre there is a similar but not identical view in watercolour by Rousseau of an Auvergne valley, Landscape of Auvergne, which features a small village and white church with a tower visible in the foreground, and mists hovering over the valley (fig. 3). The same dark green tree lines are present throughout. As with NG 3296, the watercolour must have been painted from a high vantage point, looking down into the valley. The far end of the valley is shrouded in white mist, but it seems likely that the view is towards a plain rather than a chain of mountains, suggesting that if this is the Vallée du Falgoux, it is viewed from the other end, with the village of Le Falgoux visible in the middle‐ground (the church at Le Falgoux, while not white in colour, does have a pointed tower). A further related painting, Valley of Auvergne (fig. 5), shows possibly the same view as the watercolour. Although Rousseau has not included a village, [page [408]] [page [409]] [page 410] perhaps because it is hidden by the high ledge on which he must have been standing to paint this precipitous view, he has depicted the river Mars running along the valley floor. It is possibly sunset. The sky has a golden tinge and the blue landscape beyond the valley is overlaid with wisps of mist.

**Fig. 2**
Théodore Rousseau, *Valley in the Auvergne Mountains*, 1830. Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 21.9 × 31.1 cm. Saint Louis Art Museum. © Saint Louis Art Museum / Bridgeman Images

**Fig. 3**
Théodore Rousseau, *Landscape of Auvergne*, 1830. Watercolour heightened with gouache, 20.4 × 30.8 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre. © RMN‐Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Jean‐Gilles Berizzi

**Fig. 4**
Detail of NG 3296. © The National Gallery, London

**Fig. 5**
Théodore Rousseau, *Valley of Auvergne*, 1830. Oil on paper laid on canvas, 17.1 × 33.3 cm. Private collection. © Courtesy of the owners

Provenance

NG 3296 was one of 91 paintings (mostly plein‐air studies, including a group of 12 sketches from the Auvergne trip) sold by the artist to Durand‐Ruel and Brame between March and June 1867 for 100,000 francs, subsequently exhibited by them both in their galleries and in a special exhibition of 109 paintings, including 80 studies and sketches at the Cercle des Arts de la rue de Choiseul in June 1867.¹² This picture was sold by the artist for 200 francs and offered for sale by Durand‐Ruel and Brame for 600 francs. It was eventually sold to a Mr Ourdeki (perhaps Hourquebie, a dealer who might have bought it on behalf of Sensier) for 300 francs in July 1869;¹³ in the collection of the civil servant, art critic and dealer Alfred Sensier (1815–1877);¹⁴ his sale, Paris, 10–15 December 1877, lot 97 (La Vallée de Saint‐Vincent; à l’horizon, le chaîne du Cantal, 1830), bought Guébin for 390 francs (not lot 30, as stated in the Degas sale);¹⁵ in Guébin sale, Paris, 2 March 1881, lot 74 (Vue de Mar en Auvergne, ‘provient de la vente de M. Sensier’, no dimensions); bought by Barbedienne for 240 francs;¹⁶ in the collection of comte Armand Doria (1824–1896); Doria sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 4–5 May 1899, lot 221, bought Edgar Degas (1834–1917) for 1,000 francs;¹⁷ Degas sale, Paris, 26 March 1918, lot 19, bought by special grant for the National Gallery;¹⁸ for a time at the Tate Gallery; transferred in 1956.

Former Owner: Barbedienne

While it is possible that Barbedienne was Pierre Barbedienne (in whose sale of 27 April 1885 NG 3296 did not feature), the purchaser at the Guébin sale is more likely to be Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810–1892), who in 1838 founded, with Achille Collas, a foundry that produced reduced versions of sculpture. He built up his own collection of art, including a large collection of works by Thomas Couture, of whom he was a friend and also appears to have acted as a dealer. The painting by Corot from the Guébin sale, Forest of Fontainebleau (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), was bought by Louis Latouche and sold by him to Barbedienne, who in turn sold it to Thomas Robinson for Seth Morton Vose (1831–1910). The sale of his personal collection (Catalogue de Tableaux … Composant la Collection de M. Barbedienne, Paris, 2–3 June 1892) did not include NG 3296 and it is conceivable that he sold it to comte Armand Doria (1824–1896), in whose collection it next appears.

Exhibitions

Paris 1867c (15);¹⁹ London 1949–50 (213); London 1966; Norwich and London 1982 (2); London 1996b (44); New York 1997–8 (not numbered); London 1999–2004 (not numbered); London 2007–8 (not numbered); London 2009 (12 in accompanying book); Madrid 2013 (34); Paris, London and Philadelphia 2014–15 (92 in Paris; 85 in London); London 2016 (not numbered). On long‐term loan to the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield from September 1966 to August 1975 ; Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry, from July 1978 to August 1981 .

Literature

Burty 1867, pp. 20–1 (reprinted in Burty 1877, p. 78); Davies and Gould 1970, pp. 127–8; Green 1982, no. 2 and pp. 40–1; Dumas, ‘Degas and his Collection’, in Dumas 1997, pp. 43 and 71, note 209; White, Pilc and Kirby 1998, p. 94; Roy 1999, p. 332; Schulman and Bataillès 1999, p. 107, no. 73; Miquel 2010, pp. 70–1, 193.

[page 411]

Notes

1 It is possible that this monogram was painted by a later hand to resemble the stamp of the studio sale, possibly the same hand as that which added the strip at the top. Verbal suggestion by Simon Kelly, 28 January 2002. In the catalogue for the Degas sale it is noted: ‘A gauche, l’estampille Th.R’. (Back to text.)

2 See Burty 1867, description of no. 15, pp. 20–1 (reprinted in Burty 1877, p. 78): ‘La vallée de Saint‐Vincent. Ses verdures sont noyées dans les brumes grises du matin. Au fond, la chaîne du Cantal se profile doucement en bleu sur le ciel que rougessait les premiers feux du soleil levant’ (dimensions given in catalogue as ‘1830 – L.33c.; H.16c.’). (Back to text.)

3 These results are reported in White, Pilc and Kirby 1998, p. 94. (Back to text.)

4 Burty 1867, pp. 20–1 (reprinted in Burty 1877, p. 78). (Back to text.)

5 The peaks were first identified by Pierre Miquel in an undated letter in the NG 3296 dossier. In Miquel 2010, p. 193, he identifies the peak to the right of Puy Mary as Le Griou. (Back to text.)

6 Miquel gives the title as ‘Le Cirque de la Haute Vallée du Falgoux, dit la Vallée de Saint‐Vincent’. Ibid. , p. 193. (Back to text.)

7 For his itinerary see Miquel 1975–87, III (1975), p. 433; for the context in which Rousseau made his studies see Allan, ‘“A method matters little”: Rousseau’s Working Procedures as a Painter’, in Allan and Kopp 2016, pp. 23–43, esp. pp. 23–4. Auvergne’s popularity was in part stimulated by the series Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France, with two volumes published on Auvergne in 1829 and 1833 by Charles Nodier, Baron Taylor and Alphonse de Cailleux. See Eitner 2000, p. 336, for the popularity of the region and for the number of Auvergne views exhibited at the Salon between 1827 and 1833. Rousseau’s Salon picture Paysage; site d’Auvergne has been identified by Patrick Noon as Hilly Landscape with an Angler (1831; Rotterdam, Museum Noijmans van Beuningen). See P. Noon, ‘“The Finest Poetic Descriptions”: Landscape Painting in France and Great Britain’, in Noon 2003, p. 208. (Back to text.)

8 ‘Rousseau passa l’été de 1830 en Auvergne. De ce moment (les fins dessins que l’on vit à sa vente posthume l’ont prouvé), le jeune maître commença à se sentir en possession de lui‐même. Ses études de Rochers, sur le flanc de la vallée de Saint‐Thiésac (Cantal), ses vues de la vallée de Saint‐Vincent, du village de Falgout, de la ville de Thiers, furent d’une allure robuste, d’une couleur ardente, d’un caractère âpre et fier’. Burty 1868, p. 309 (reprinted in Burty 1877, p. 127). (Back to text.)

9 See Sensier 1872, pp. 23–4. (Back to text.)

10 Miquel writes with regard to NG 3296 that the level of detail is incompatible with someone looking, at a distance, directly into the rising sun, but that when he himself used an optical device his doubts were resolved. Miquel 2010, p. 71. (Back to text.)

11 Schulman and Bataillès 1999, no. 31. (Back to text.)

12 It was in October 1866 that they visited Rousseau’s studio but the purchase does not appear in the stockbooks until spring 1867. See S. Kelly, ‘Paul Durand‐Ruel et “la belle école de 1830”’, in Patry 2014, pp. 46–59, esp. pp. 52–5 (French edn), pp. 54–75, esp. pp. 64–9 (English edn) and S. Kelly, ‘“An Artist Focused on His Research”: Théodore Rousseau and the Marketing of his Oil Studies and Drawings’, in Kurlander and Kelly 2014, pp. 24–39, esp. pp. 29–30. In an email of 11 March 2002 Simon Kelly states that it was the fiftieth picture of a group of seventy. See also Kelly 1996, p. 235, and Kelly 1999, p. 427. Not all sources give the same number or price. Sensier 1872, p. 327, gives the figure of 140,000 francs as the price given: 100,000 francs for sixty paintings, and 40,000 francs for other compositions ‘en voie d’exécution’ (‘in the process of execution’). Yeide 1998, p. 45, writes of around seventy paintings for 130,000 francs, as recalled by Durand‐Ruel (Mémoires de Paul Durand‐Ruel, in Venturi 1939, II, pp. 166–7). The majority of works in the exhibition did not sell immediately, and remained in their stock. (Back to text.)

13 Information from Archives Durand‐Ruel, stock 1868–1873, ‘Tableaux (achats) 1868 à 1873. Tableaux achetés de moité avec M. Brame’, kindly conveyed by Simon Kelly in the email referred to in note 12, and subsequently published in Patry 2014, no. 92. (Back to text.)

14 On Sensier see Parsons and McWilliam 1983, pp. 38–58; Chavary 1877, pp. 12–15; Paul Mantz’s introduction to Sensier’s posthumously published La Vie et l’Oeuvre de Jean‐François Millet, 1881; and Miquel 2010, pp. 190–249, ‘Qui est Alfred Sensier?’. (Back to text.)

15 Information from annotated catalogue consulted in the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (Collections Jacques Doucet), Paris. (Back to text.)

16 Guébin has not been identified. His sale consisted of a number of works by modern artists, including four by Léon‐Germain Pelouse (1838–1891). He was still alive in 1892, when he lent five paintings by Pelouse to the artist’s exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux‐Arts in that year. He also owned a drawing by Millet (also from Sensier’s sale), The Potato Harvest, now in The Morgan Library and Museum, New York (Thaw Collection, inv. 2010.114) and Corot, Forest of Fontainebleau (1846; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts). The catalogue consulted in the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (Collections Jacques Doucet), Paris, is not annotated with names but that in the Frick Art Reference Library is, and the author is grateful to Victoria Reed, Monica S. Sadler Curator for Provenance, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for providing a scanned copy. (Back to text.)

17 Collection de M. Le Comte Armand Doria. Tome Premier, tableaux modernes. Préface et Catalogue analytique par M.L. Roger‐Milès. Précédés d’un essai sur la Vie du Comte Armand Doria par M. Arsène Alexandre, Paris, Imprimerie Georges Petit, 1899, lot 221, Vallée de Saint‐Vincent; au fond, chaîne du Cantal (1830). The catalogue states that it was in the Vente Sensier, December 1877, lot 97. Apparently Degas bought the painting by mistake, thinking from where he stood that it was a Corot: ‘Th. Rousseau. Studies of Mountains, Cantal Valley. No. 221 Doria sale May [18]99, 1000 francs. Bought by mistake, I thought, from a bit of a distance, that they were selling a Corot. Durand‐Ruel didn’t want to take it back from me and assured me that it was an excellent picture, which is true. I remember Moreau‐Nélaton, laughing at my blindness, when they knocked it down to me ’. .’ Degas’s unpublished notes, a partial inventory of his collection (private collection). See Dumas, ‘Degas and His Collection’, in Dumas 1997, pp. 43 and 71, note 209. (Back to text.)

18 Lot 89, La Vallée de Saint‐Vincent, A l’horizon, la chaîne du Cantal (1830). The Atelier Degas stamp is on the back of the picture. For the Degas collection and sales see Clarke 1991a, pp. 15–20; Dumas 1996, p. 36, and Dumas 1997. For the Degas sales and the National Gallery see Holmes 1936, Sutton 1989 and Emberton 1996. (Back to text.)

19 The Rousseau exhibition held at the Cercle des Arts, Paris, in June 1867 was organised by Brame and Durand‐Ruel. Other Cercles des Arts, which took place in the rue de Choiseul, were organised by Detrimont. For the cercles, see Mainardi 1987, pp. 180–2, and Miquel 1975–87, VI (1987), p. 395. (Back to text.)

List of archive references cited

Archives Durand‐Ruel, stock 1868–1873: Tableaux (achats) 1868 à 1873. Tableaux achetés de moité avec M. Brame
London, National Gallery, Archive, curatorial dossier for NG3296: Pierre Miquel, undated letter

List of references cited

Allan 2016: Allan, Scott, ‘“A method matters little”: Rousseau’s Working Procedures as a Painter’, in Unruly Nature: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau, Scott Allan and Edouard Kopp (exh. cat. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen), Los Angeles 2016, 23–43
Allan and Kopp 2016: Allan, Scott and Edouard Kopp, Unruly Nature: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau (exh. cat. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen), Los Angeles 2016
Burty 1867: Burty, Philippe, Notice des Etudes Peintes par Théodore Rousseau exposées au Cercle des Arts (exh. cat. Cercle des Arts, Paris), Paris 1867 (reprinted, Maîtres et petits maîtres, Paris 1877, 71ff.)
Burty 1868: Burty, Philippe, ‘Th. Rousseau’, Gazette des Beaux‐Arts, 1868, 24, 305–25 (reprinted, Maîtres et petits maîtres, Paris 1877, 120ff.)
Burty 1877: Burty, Philippe, Maîtres et petits maîtres, Paris 1877
Chavary 1877: Chavary, Marin‐Etienne, ‘Alfred Sensier’, L’Amateur des Autographes, January 1877, 280, 12–15
Clarke 1991: Clarke, Michael, ‘Degas and Corot: The Affinity between two Artists’, Apollo, July 1991, 15–20
Davies and Gould 1970: Davies, Martin, revised by Cecil Gould, National Gallery Catalogues: French School Early 19th Century, Impressionists, Post‐Impressionists, etc., London 1970
Dumas 1996: Dumas, Ann, Degas as a Collector (exh. cat. National Gallery, London), London 1996
Dumas 1997: et al., The Private Collection of Edgar Degas (exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), New York 1997
Dumas 1997a: Dumas, Ann, ‘Degas and his Collection’, in The Private Collection of Edgar Degas, et al. (exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), New York 1997
Egerton 1998: Egerton, Judy, National Gallery Catalogues: The British School, London 1998
Eitner 2000: Eitner, Lorenz, The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue: French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Washington 2000, I, Before Impressionism
Emberton 1996: Emberton, Anne, ‘Keynes and the Degas Sale’, History Today, January 1996, 46, 22–8
Green 1982: Green, Nicholas, Théodore Rousseau 1812–1867: Loan Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Prints from English and Scottish Collections (exh. cat. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich; Hazlitt Gooden and Fox, London), London 1982
Herring and Mazzotta 2009: Herring, Sarah and Antonio Mazzotta, Corot to Monet: A Fresh Look at Landscape from the Collection (exh. cat. National Gallery, London), London 2009
Holmes 1936: Holmes, C.J., Self and Partners (Mostly Self): Being the Reminiscences of C.J. Holmes, London 1936
Kelly 1996: Kelly, Simon, ‘Théodore Rousseau, his Patrons and his Public’ (DPhil thesis), Oxford 1996
Kelly 1999: Kelly, Simon, ‘The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau and their Market’, in Barbizon. Malerei der Natur – Natur der Malerei, eds Andreas Burmester, Christoph Heilmann and Michael F. Zimmermann (rev. papers from international symposium held in 1996 (Im Auftrag der Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen, des Doerner Institutes und des Zentralinstitutes für Kunstgeschichte, München)), Munich 1999, 419–36
Kelly 2014a: Kelly, S., ‘Paul Durand‐Ruel et “la belle école de 1830”’, in Paul Durand‐Ruel. Le Pari de l’Impressionisme, Sylvie Patry, Christopher Riopelle, Joseph J. Rishel, Anne Robbins and Jennifer A. Thompson (exh. cat. Musée du Luxembourg, Paris; National Gallery, London; Philadelphia Museum of Art)(London edn entitled Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand‐Ruel and the Modern Art Market; Philadelphia edn entitled Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand‐Ruel and the New Painting), New Haven and London 2014, 46–59
Kelly 2014b: Kelly, S., ‘“An Artist Focused on His Research”: Théodore Rousseau and the Marketing of his Oil Studies and Drawings’, in The Untamed Landscape: Théodore Rousseau and the Path to Barbizon, Amy Kurlander and Simon Kelly (exh. cat. Morgan Library and Museum, New York), New York 2014, 24–39
Kurlander and Kelly: Kurlander, Amy and Simon Kelly, The Untamed Landscape: Théodore Rousseau and the Path to Barbizon (exh. cat. Morgan Library and Museum, New York), New York 2014
Mainardi 1987: Mainardi, Patricia, Art and Politics of the Second Empire: The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867, New Haven and London 1987
Miquel 1975–87: Miquel, Pierre, Le Paysage français au XIXe siècle 1824–1874. L’Ecole de la nature (I–III: Maurs‐la‐Jolie (1975); IV: Le paysge français au XIXe siècle, 1840–1900 (1985); V: Paysage et Société 1800–1900 (1985); VI: L’Art et L’Argent, 1800–1900 (1987)), 1975–87, I–III
Miquel 2010: Miquel, Pierre and Rolande Miquel, Théodore Rousseau 1812–1867, Paris 2010
Nodier, Taylor and Cailleux 1829/33: Nodier, Charles, Baron Taylor and Alphonse de Cailleux, Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France, 1829 and 1833, volumes on the Auvergne
Noon 2003: Noon, P., ‘“The Finest Poetic Descriptions”: Landscape Painting in France and Great Britain’, in Constable to Delacroix. British Art and the French Romantics, Patrick Noon, et al. (exh. cat. Tate, London; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), London 2003
Noon et al. 2003: Noon, Patrick, et al., Constable to Delacroix. British Art and the French Romantics (exh. cat. Tate, London; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), London 2003
Parsons and McWilliam 1983: Parsons, Christopher and Neil McWilliam, ‘“Le Paysan de Paris”: Alfred Sensier and the Myth of Rural France’, Oxford Art Journal, 1983, 6, 2, 38–58
Patry 2014: Patry, Sylvie, Christopher Riopelle, Joseph J. Rishel, Anne Robbins and Jennifer A. Thompson, Paul Durand‐Ruel. Le Pari de l’Impressionisme (exh. cat. Musée du Luxembourg, Paris; National Gallery, London; Philadelphia Museum of Art)(London edn entitled Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand‐Ruel and the Modern Art Market; Philadelphia edn entitled Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand‐Ruel and the New Painting), New Haven and London 2014
Roy 1999: Roy, Ashok, ‘Barbizon Painters: Tradition and Innovation in Artists’ Materials’, in Barbizon. Malerei der Natur – Natur der Malerei, eds Andreas Burmester, Christoph Heilmann and Michael F. Zimmermann (rev. papers from international symposium held in 1996 (Im Auftrag der Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen, des Doerner Institutes und des Zentralinstitutes für Kunstgeschichte, München)), Munich 1999, 330–42
Schulman and Bataillès 1999: Schulman, Michel, with the collaboration of Marie Bataillès, Théodore Rousseau 1812–1867. Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, Paris 1999
Sensier 1872: Sensier, Alfred, Souvenirs sur Théodore Rousseau, Paris 1872
Sensier and Mantz 1881: Sensier, Alfred and Paul Mantz, La vie et l’oeuvre de Jean François Millet, Paris 1881
Sutton 1989: Sutton, Denys, ‘The Degas Sales and England’, Burlington Magazine, April 1989, 131, 1033, 266–72
Venturi 1939: Venturi, Lionel, Les Archives de l’Impressionisme. Lettres de Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley et autres. Mémoires de Paul Durand‐Ruel. Documents, 2 vols, Paris and New York 1939
White, Pilc and Kirby 1998: White, Raymond, Jennifer Pilc and Jo Kirby, ‘Analyses of Paint Media’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 1998, 19, 74–95
Yeide 1998: Yeide, Nancy, ‘Hector Brame: An Art Dealer in Nineteenth‐Century Paris’, Apollo, March 1998, 40–7

List of exhibitions cited

Coventry 1978–81: Coventry, Herbert Art Gallery, long-term loan, July 1978–August 1981
London 1949–50: London, Royal Academy of Arts, An Exhibition of Landscape in French Art 1550–1900, 1949–50
London 1966, National Gallery a: London, National Gallery, Exhibition of Pictures from the National Gallery Loan Collection which are shortly to go to the Regions, 1966
London 1996: London, National Gallery, Degas as a Collector, 1996 (exh. cat.: Dumas 1996)
London 2007–8: London, National Gallery, The Landscape Oil Sketch, 2007–8
London 2009: London, National Gallery, Corot to Monet: A Fresh Look at Landscape from the Collection, 2009
London 2016: London, National Gallery, Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck, 2016
London, New York, Manchester, York, Memphis, Cincinnati and Palm Beach 1999–2004: London, National Gallery; New York, Frick Collection; Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery; York, York City Art Gallery; Dixon Gallery and Gardens; Cincinnati, Cincinnati Art Museum; Palm Beach, Norton Museum of Art, A Brush with Nature: The Gere Collection of Landscape Oil Sketches, 1999–2004
Madrid 2013: Madrid, Museo Thyssen‐Bornemisza, Impressionismo y aire libre. De Corot a Van Gogh, 2013
New York 1997–8: New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Private Collection of Edgar Degas, 1997–8
Norwich and London 1982: Norwich, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts; London, Hazlitt Gooden and Fox, Théodore Rousseau 1812–1867: Loan Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Prints from English and Scottish Collections, 1982
Paris 1867, Cercle des Arts: Paris, Cercle des Arts, Notice des Etudes Peintes par Théodore Rousseau exposées au Cercle des Arts, 1867
Paris, London and Philadelphia 2014–15: Paris, Musée du Luxembourg; London, National Gallery; Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Paul Durand‐Ruel: Le Pari de l’Impressionnisme, 9 October 2014–8 February 2015; 4 March–31 May 2015; 18 June–13 September 2015; London edition entitled Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand‐Ruel and the Modern Art Market; Philadelphia edition entitled Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand‐Ruel and the New Painting
Sheffield 1966–75: Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, long-term loan, September 1966–August 1975

The Scope and Presentation of the Catalogue

The paintings catalogued in this volume are, for the most part, landscapes dating from the early nineteenth century through to the early 1870s, by mainly French artists working before and overlapping slightly with their successors, the Impressionists.

Swiss, Flemish and Belgian landscapists in the collection have been included. Denis and Cels (the latter painting later in the century) both worked in the oil sketching tradition which, while centred in Italy at the beginning of the century, was international in scope. The Swiss landscape artist Calame also practised oil sketching and his studio works were very much informed by French academic landscape practice. Finally, we thought it appropriate to include the British artist Bonington, who spent much of his short life in France, and was a pivotal figure between the French and British traditions. At the time Judy Egerton published her magisterial catalogue of the British School in 1998, there was no painting by Bonington in the collection to provoke discussion of the cross‐Channel artistic ferment his art initiated. Happily, that lacuna has been filled.

The bulk of the catalogue is made up of artists associated with the Barbizon School, among them Corot – of whom the Gallery holds a substantial collection, from his earliest to his latest work – Daubigny and Rousseau. Despite his being a friend and associate of Corot and Daubigny, the one work in the collection by Honoré‐Victorin Daumier has been excluded, as he was not a landscape artist. On the other hand, it did ~~not not~~ not make sense to split up works by such artists as Corot, Millet and Courbet, and examples of their figurative paintings have been included.

While these artists were regular exhibitors at the Salon, only one painting in the collection, Millet’s The Winnower, was actually shown at a Salon, that of 1848. For the most part the paintings are small in scale, some probably painted with private collectors or the market in mind, others intimate recordings of landscapes, started, and in some ~~cases, completed~~ cases completed, in the open air. As the essay on the history of the collection discusses, the National Gallery, in common with other British institutions around 1900, was hesitant in its collecting of such work, and the first acquisitions came as gifts or bequests from private collections. In fact, the vast majority of the works in this catalogue came to the Gallery as bequests or gifts, meaning that it has been dependent for such works on the generosity of private collectors. Such a lack of proactive purchasing has inevitably resulted in lacunae, notably in works by the Barbizon painters Constant Troyon (1810–1865) and Charles‐Emile Jacque (1813–1894). In recent years oil studies have been purchased. These holdings have been increased significantly by eight studies generously given by John Lishawa in 2019, a gift alas too late to be included in this volume. Neither have we been able to include a newly acquired painting by Bonington, On the Seine – Morning (acquired through HM Government’s Acceptance in Lieu of Inheritance Tax Scheme).

Each entry begins with technical information, the material provided by, and in its presentation, shaped very much by the input of colleagues from the Conservation and Scientific departments, Hayley Tomlinson, Gabriella Macaro, David Peggie and Nelly von Aderkas. The paintings were closely examined out of their frames, both with the naked eye and under magnification, using visible and ultraviolet light. In addition, ~~x‐radiographs~~ X‐radiographs were made of many of the paintings and some works were also examined using infrared reflectography. Infrared reflectography was carried out using the digital infrared scanning camera OSIRIS which contains an indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) sensor. Paint samples obtained from the works were generally examined in cross‐section which allowed for analysis of preparatory layers as well as the identification of pigments and paint layer structures, providing an understanding of the artists’ working methods. Stereo‐microscopy, scanning electron microscope with energy‐dispersive ~~x‐ray~~ X‐ray detection (SEM–EDX), and in some cases Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR‐FTIR), were the main analytical instruments used in the identification of pigments and preparatory layers. In addition, binding media analysis was carried out on samples using gas‐chromatography (GC) or gas‐chromatography mass spectrometry (GC–MS) while information on the dye sources used in the red or yellow lake pigments was obtained using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC).

As the nineteenth century was a period of great evolution in methods of working and materials available, particularly among landscape painters, we decided to complement the material presented in the individual entries with two essays providing more of an overview of developments in the practice and reception of landscape. These are accompanied by an essay detailing the collection of these paintings by the National Gallery itself.

The technical material is followed by discussion of the painting, with provenance and sections on exhibitions and literature. In some entries separate paragraphs are devoted to former owners, particularly in the case of less well‐known individuals and when there is speculation as to the identity of a particular collector. For that reason, such figures as Lucian Freud, who need no introduction, are not dealt with in this way.

About this version

Version 3, generated from files SH_2019__16.xml dated 02/03/2025 and database__16.xml dated 02/03/2025 using stylesheet 16_teiToHtml_externalDb.xsl dated 03/01/2025. Refactored handling of main images for each entry; entries for NG2058, NG2622, NG2632, NG2634, NG2876, NG3296, NG6253, NG6447, NG6603, NG6651-NG6654 and NG6660, and previously-published ‘taster’ entries for NG2625 and NG3237, proofread and corrected.

Cite this entry

Permalink (this version): https://data.ng.ac.uk/0DW8-000B-0000-0000
Permalink (latest version): https://data.ng.ac.uk/0DD7-000B-0000-0000
Chicago style: Herring, Sarah. “NG 3296, The Valley of Saint‐Vincent”. 2019, online version 3, March 2, 2025. https://data.ng.ac.uk/0DW8-000B-0000-0000.
Harvard style: Herring, Sarah (2019) NG 3296, The Valley of Saint‐Vincent. Online version 3, London: National Gallery, 2025. Available at: https://data.ng.ac.uk/0DW8-000B-0000-0000 (Accessed: 28 March 2025).
MHRA style: Herring, Sarah, NG 3296, The Valley of Saint‐Vincent (National Gallery, 2019; online version 3, 2025) <https://data.ng.ac.uk/0DW8-000B-0000-0000> [accessed: 28 March 2025]

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The Valley of Saint-Vincent:Catalogue entry