Monet, Claude (1840-1926)
Le chêne Bodmer de la forêt de Fontainebleau (The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau Forest)
1865
Oil on canvas, 96.2 x 129.2 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Forest of Fontainebleau, south of Paris, became an artistic hot spot in the 1830s. One popular motif was the Bodmer Oak, named after Swiss artist Karl Bodmer (1809–1893), who exhibited a painting of the tree at the Salon of 1850. Monet used bright yellows, greens, and oranges to depict sunlight filtering through the canopy of branches. The carpet of russet leaves signals that he painted this view just before he concluded a months-long visit to Fontainebleau in October 1865. It is probably the last of several landscapes related to his monumental Luncheon on the Grass (1865–66; Musée d’Orsay, Paris), which is set in a sunny woodland glade. (MET)