The Old Park at Saint-Cloud

This early work reveals Rousseau’s lifelong devotion to painting directly from nature. In place of heroic, classical motifs, he developed convincing atmospheric effects through plein-air painting. As he put it: “I was listening to the voices of the trees. Suddenly I learned the forest language from their unpredictable movements, their different shapes, and the extraordinary way they would respond to light … they could not speak, but I could read their gestures and discern what they were feeling.”