Simon Kelly - Théodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market: An Avant-Garde Landscape Painter in Nineteenth-Century France

Thodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market

Thodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market

An Avant-Garde Landscape Painter in Nineteenth-Century France

Simon Kelly

Contextualizing Art Markets

This series presents new, original research that reconceives the scope and function of art markets throughout history by examining them in the context of broader institutional practices, knowledge networks, social structures, collecting activities, and creative strategies. In many cases, art market activities have been studied in isolation from broader themes within art history, a trend that has tended to stifle exchange across disciplinary boundaries. Contextualizing Art Markets seeks to foster increased dialogue between art historians, artists, curators, economists, gallerists, and other market professionals by contextualizing art markets around the world within wider art historical discourses and institutional practices.

The series has been developed in the belief that the reciprocal relation between art and finance is undergoing a period of change: artists are adopting innovative strategies for the commercial promotion of their work, auction houses are expanding their educational programmes, art fairs are attracting unprecedented audience numbers, museums are becoming global brands, private galleries are showing increasingly curated exhibitions, and collectors are establishing new exhibition spaces. As the divide between public and private practices narrows, questions about the social and ethical impact of market activities on the production, collection, and reception of art have become newly pertinent. By combining trends within the broader discipline of art history with investigations of marketplace dynamics, Contextualizing Art Markets explores the imbrication of art and economics as a driving force behind the aesthetic and social development of the art world. We welcome proposals that debate these issues across a range of historical periods and geographies.

Series Editor:

Kathryn Brown, Loughborough University, UK

Editorial Board:

Vronique Chagnon-Burke, Christies Education, USA

Christel H. Force, Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA

Charlotte Galloway, Australian National University, Australia

Mel Jordan, Coventry University, UK

Alain Quemin, Universit Paris-8, France

Mark Westgarth, University of Leeds, UK

Published Volumes in the Series

Art Markets, Agents and Collectors: Collecting Strategies in Europe and the United States, 15501950, edited by Adriana Turpin and Susan Bracken Collecting Prints, Posters, and Ephemera: Perspectives in a Global World, edited by Ruth E. Iskin and Britany Salsbury

Corporate Patronage of Art and Architecture in the United States, Late Nineteenth Century to the Present, edited by Monica E. Jovanovich and Melissa Renn Ellen Emmet Rand: Gender, Art, and Business, edited by Alexis L. Boylan Ethnographic Collecting and African Agency in Early Colonial West Africa: A Study of Trans-Imperial Cultural Flows, by Zachary Kingdon Old Masters Worldwide: Markets, Movements and Museums, 17891939, edited by Susanna Avery-Quash and Barbara Pezzini

Pioneers of the Global Art Market: Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 18501950, edited by Christel H. Force

Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France, 18531914, by Elizabeth Emery

Thodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market: An Avant-Garde Landscape Painter in Nineteenth-Century France, by Simon Kelly

Women, Art and Money in England, 18801914: The Hustle and the Scramble, by Maria Quirk

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First published in Great Britain 2021

Copyright Simon Kelly, 2021

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Simon Kelly has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

Cover image: Effet de Givre, 1845 (oil on canvas), Theodore Rousseau (181267) / Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, USA / Bridgeman Images

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kelly, Simon (Simon R.), author.

Title: Theodore Rousseau and the rise of the modern art market : an avant-garde landscape painter in nineteenth-century France / Simon Kelly.

Description: New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, [2021] | Series: Contextualizing art markets | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020045924 (print) | LCCN 2020045925 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501343797 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501343803 (epub) | ISBN 9781501343810 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Rousseau, Theodore, 1812-1867Criticism and interpretation. | ArtistsSocial networksFranceHistory19th century. | ArtEconomic aspectsFranceHistory19th century.

Classification: LCC ND553.R675 K45 2021 (print) | LCC ND553.R675 (ebook) | DDC 759.4dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045924

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045925

ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-4379-7

ePDF: 978-1-5013-4381-0

eBook: 978-1-5013-4380-3

Series: Contextualizing Art Markets

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For my parents

The nineteenth-century French landscape painter Thodore Rousseau occupies a conflicted position in histories of European art. Posited by Charles Baudelaire as one of the leaders of avant-garde painting in 1845, Rousseau became increasingly marginalized in art critical writing of the twentieth century. Simon Kellys book offers an important corrective to this history. By focusing not just on Rousseaus output, but also on the innovative ways in which he created a market for his works, Kelly recovers the original radical charge of Rousseaus works. By so doing, he offers a fresh view of the artists role in shaping the creative networks and commercial frameworks that came to define Europes modernist art world.

In Kellys account, reconceiving Rousseaus art and legacy means providing a better understanding of how his output connects to self-consciously modern preoccupations as these developed from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. This includes consideration of Rousseaus investigation of ecological issues, his pioneering approach to plein-air painting, and the connections he forged between radical republican politics and artistic expression. Most importantly for the purposes of the Contextualizing Art Markets