Widely regarded as one of the founding members of the Barbizon School today, Rousseau attracted considerable attention for his aptitude for capturing light in detail. No less impressive than his paintings from this period are his works on paper from those same years. The mastery displayed in these works - the expert command of medium, the keen attention to detail, and the overall balance of composition - is indicative of the artist's future success as a renowned landscape painter. Albert Wolff wrote enthusiastically of Rousseau’s work in 1886:

Rousseau renders with the same mastery, the smile of creation and its terrors, the broad open plain and the mysterious forest, the limpid, sun-bright sky or the heaping of the clouds.... He has understood all, rendered all with equal genius.... He has been by turns as much a poet as Corot, as melancholy as Millet, as awful as Dupré; he is the most complete, for he embraces landscape art absolutely.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is a large, detailed landscaped drawing, Habitations sous des chênes dans les Landes, (after 1844). It exemplifies Rousseau’s mastery of precision and form. Its majestic central tree, with luxuriant foliage, towers over a sunny pasture. The small cottage nestled in the left-hand corner serves as a quiet reminder of humankind's humbleness in the face of nature.

Moeller Fine Art

Achim Moeller Ltd., founded in London in June 1972, moved to New York in October of 1984 as Moeller Fine Art Ltd. The gallery specializes in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century masterworks, and regularly organizes museum-quality exhibitions, including “From Daumier to Matisse: French Master Drawings from the John C. Whitehead Collection,” “Howard Wise: Exploring the New,” and “Between Friends: Giacomo Balla + Piero Dorazio,” “Lyonel Feininger + Mark Tobey.” Moeller Fine Art is the foremost gallery in the United States for works by German Expressionists and the Masters of the Bauhaus.

For nearly, fifty years, Achim Moeller, the gallery’s principal, has helped build important and substantial private and public collections that are coherent in concept, period, and quality. Moeller Fine Art also assists individuals and institutions with collection management, insurance valuation, tax and estate planning, and auction representation.

For further information, please contact +1 212 644 2133 or, to view highlights from the exhibition or to learn more about the artist, please visit our website.