Pathway in the Forest of Fontainebleau
1850
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1850
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Pathway in the Forest of Fontainebleau is a 1850 by Gustave Le Gray, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet forest path lined by trees, their trunks half in light and half in deep shadow. The ground is damp with fallen leaves. A single figure walks away down the path. Le Gray took this photo in the Forest of Fontainebleau near Paris. He figured out how to show green leaves and dark shadows clearly at a time when cameras struggled with both. This looks like a painting but is a photograph. Try looking up Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820–1884).
One of the most inventive and influential French photographers of the 1850s, Le Gray was widely known for his landmark studies taken in the Forest of Fontainbleau, near Paris, from about 1849 to 1857. The photographs share a kinship with the work of the Barbizon painters, such as Corot, Daubigny, and Millet, who also worked there. Le Gray skillfully overcame technical problems to master the photographing of greenery and dark areas and to exploit the visual effects of light and atmosphere. In this enchanting scene, the viewer is drawn almost magnetically into a carriage trail surrounded by a…
Read the full account in the museum source.
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