Humanities & Social Sciences Library
Stokes Gallery
March 7 to June 28, 2008
Théodore RousseauCherry tree, 1855
Cliché-verre is a technique that combines aspects of printmaking and photography. Developed around 1839, this process begins with a glass plate on which an artist either paints a design or scratches a design on a prepared ground. The glass plate is then treated as a negative and placed on top of light-sensitive paper and exposed to the sun. Artists of the Barbizon school were the first, and most prolific, experimenters with this technique. These artists, who lived and worked near the forest of Fontainebleau, celebrated the natural world. They turned away from both classical and romantic treatments of landscape and chose to depict humble scenes based on their direct observations of nature. This exhibition draws from the extraordinary holdings of French 19th-century prints in the Samuel Putnam Avery Collection and features cliché-verre landscapes by Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny, and Jean François Millet.
(Press release)
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New York Times Review Sleight of Camera, Capturing Fleeting Impressions
by Karen Rosenthal
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