Théodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market: An Avant-Garde Landscape Painter in Nineteenth-Century France(Contextualizing Art Markets)

The 19th century in France witnessed the emergence of the structures of the modern art market that remain until this day. This book examines the relationship between the avant-garde Barbizon landscape painter, Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), and this market, exploring the constellation of patrons, art dealers and critics who surrounded the artist. It argues for the pioneering role of Rousseau, his patrons and his public in the origins of the modern art market, and, in so doing, shifts attention away from the more traditional focus on the novel careers of the Impressionists and their supporters. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book provides new insight into the role of the modern artist as professional. It provides a new understanding of the complex iconographical and formal choices within Rousseau’s work, rediscovering the original radical charge that once surrounded the artist’s work and led to extensive and peculiarly modern tensions with the market place.

Table of Contents:
List of Plates List of Figures Series Editor’s Introduction Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. “The Outlaw”: Rousseau at the Salon 2. Alternative Spaces: Artists’ Societies to the Cercle de L’Union Artistique 3. “A Small Number of the Privileged”: The Patrons 4. The Art Dealers: Adolphe Beugniet to Paul Durand-Ruel 5. “This Dangerous Game”: The Auction Sale 6. The Reproduction Industry: From Etching to Photography Rousseau’s Legacy Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Select Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Simon Kelly is Curator and Head of Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Saint Louis Art Museum, USA.

Review :
Simon Kelly’s consummate study of Théodore Rousseau draws the reader deeply into the complex lived experience of this adventurous, under-examined painter of the French landscape, bringing to light as never before an entire world of making, selling and viewing art in mid-nineteenth-century France, just as the stage was set for the avant-gardes to come. Kelly’s book makes an important contribution, both to the history of French landscape painting and to recent scholarship on the modern art market. Far from being le grand refusé, Rousseau emerges as one of the most commercially shrewd artists of his generation, who used pioneering tactics to promote his often challenging and experimental style of painting. Unorthodox and independent-minded, he became an art market innovator, anticipating some of the strategies employed by the Impressionists. Written with a sensitive and curatorial eye, this fascinating book is based on extensive archival research and includes extracts from stockbooks and procès-verbaux, as well as letters from Rousseau to his patrons, dealers, critics and fellow artists. This is an excellent book and makes a very substantial contribution to our understanding of Rousseau's work...the book must emerge as a primary point of reference for scholars of 19th-century French painting, changes in the art market, and Rousseau's role within them. The depth of research across Kelly’s book makes it an essential reference text for anyone working on the emergence of the art market in Paris. Kelly has highlighted numerous dealers, galleries, art spaces, and auctions that rarely figure in histories of the avant-garde. He shows that practices we have come to see as emblematic of impressionism in fact began much earlier… Kelly’s work helps us to continue to break down unilateral histories of modern art as a progression of independent agents and to study instead the structural conditions by which particular visions came to be celebrated.