Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

The collection of John Chandler Bancroft, Middletown, Rhode Island

Gustave J. S. White Co., Auctioneers, Newport, Rhode Island, 1989

Acquired from the above by a New England antiques dealer

To the present owners, 1989

Cuvelier made this photograph in the old-growth forest of Bas-Bréau, in the northwest corner of Fontainebleau (see also Lot 16).  Wild and overgrown, and home to many of the forest's most venerable oak trees, the area provided subject matter for numerous Barbizon artists, Camille Corot and Théodore Rousseau among them.  The congestion of Bas-Bréau's trees and undergrowth, however, was a cause for concern to forest managers, and a program of extensive thinning was suggested in the early 1850s.  The then-prevalent belief that oak forests could not survive without being systematically cut back was one reason for the proposed program, but another was to restore the forest to a state where it could adequately produce trees fit for lumber harvesting.  Rousseau fiercely believed that the forest, already in state of natural perfection, did not need to be tended, and he was tireless in his campaign to protect Bas-Bréau from any sort of exploitive management.  Ultimately, the artist was successful in exempting Bas-Bréau, as well as other areas within Fontainebleau, from management, and these protections remained in effect until World War II (cf. Greg M. Thomas, Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau, pp. 173-177).

Gauss does not account for this image, made from negative number 4, in her census.