Art by the bike trail

Tuesday
It was a grey wet morning, so a good time to go and work out at the gym. The rain had pretty well stopped by the time I left and I headed to Loveland to find some more art in the Art for All event. The Taft Museum has the map up on its web site now of the locations of all the art around the city, and I knew there were two in Loveland along the bike trail. Their distribution of the art seems rather erratic - they have a couple up in the Hamilton area, not part of Cincinnati at all, then they have two, walking distance apart, along the bike trail, and yet none in our area! It would perhaps have made more sense if one was facing north-bound cyclists and the other south-bound cyclists, but they're both facing the same direction! Oh well, I guess they had their reasons! This is The pond at Dagneau, painted by the French painter Theodore Rousseau, (1812-1867). He was born in Paris, of a bourgeois family. At first he received a business training, but soon displayed aptitude for painting. He shared the difficulties of the romantic painters of 1830, in securing for their pictures a place in the annual Paris exhibition. The influence of classically trained artists was against them, and it wasn't until 1848 that Rousseau was presented adequately to the public. Until this period Rousseau had lived only occasionally at Barbizon in the Forest of Fontainebleau, but in 1848 he took up his residence in the forest village, and spent most of his remaining days in the vicinity. He is regarded as being the leader of the Barbizon School - the art movement which took its name from the village. The art movement aimed towards Realism in art, and was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. Some of the most prominent features of this school are its tonal qualities, color, loose brushwork, and softness of form. Other notable members of the movement were Corot, Millet and Daubigny. For 6 of the 10 years we lived in France, we lived close to the village of Barbizon, and we loved taking hikes in the forest - its such a beautiful area.