After the Rain

c. 1850

Théodore Rousseau

Painter, French, 1812 - 1867

We look across a waterlogged path at a line of rust-red and bronze-brown trees that nearly span the width of this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted, which creates a blurred look. The land closest to us is in shadow and many details are difficult to make out, but pockets of bright, ice blue suggest water reflecting the pale sky above. The trees across from us have thin, spindly trunks and billowing dark red and brown canopies. A few swipes of brown, crimson red, and white suggest a person, perhaps on horseback, and perhaps a second person, a child, on the path under the trees. A line of shadow falls just beyond the trees, and a strip of brightly lit green lawn stretches back to the horizon, which comes a third of the way up the painting. More trees lining the horizon in the distance have ash-white trunks and copper-pink leaves. The blue sky above is veiled with a screen of thin fog-gray and parchment-white clouds.

Media Options

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Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Edwards, Paris. (his sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 7 March 1870, no. 32). C.G. Candano, Paris;[1] purchased 1899 by William A. Clark [1839-1925], New York; bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] According to Dana H. Carroll, Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue, Part I, Unpublished manuscript, n.d. (1925): 148, no. 107.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1867

  • Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1867, no. 547, as Le Soir après la pluie, paysage du Berry.

1920

  • Exhibition of Paintings from the Collection of Honorable William A. Clark, Lotos Club, New York, January 1920, no. 1.

1985

  • Millet and His Barbizon Contemporaries, Keio Department Store Grand Gallery, Tokyo; Hanshin Department Store Grand Gallery, Osaka; Miyazaki Prefectural Museum, Japan; Fukushima Prefectural Museum; Yamanashi Prefectural Museum, Japan, 1985.

1989

  • The William A. Clark Collection: Treasures of a Copper King, Yellowstone Art Center, Billings; Montana Historical Center, Helena, 1989, unnumbered checklist.

2017

  • Praised and Ridiculed: French Painting 1820-1880, Kunsthaus Zürich, 2017-2018, no. 99, repro.

Wikidata ID

Q46627739


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