Walking landscapes

Walking landscapes
In the footsteps of Rousseau, Courbet, Renoir, Cézanne and others

"The artist must travel on foot", said the painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes in 1799.
In his view, this was even the prerequisite for landscape painting. It is this link between landscape and walking, which took concrete form in the nineteenth century in the practice of painting in the open air, on the motif, that the exhibition seeks to bring to light here.
From walking as a philosophical exercise, conducive to knowledge and thought, to the voluntary wandering of artists in an almost impenetrable wilderness, the exhibition invites you to follow in the footsteps of these painter-walkers such as Théodore Rousseau, Gustave Courbet, Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne and many others.
By painting the landscape, these artists, against the unacceptable indifference of the world, looked everywhere for traces of their humanity. Looking for traces of themselves and leaving some behind...

The exhibition has the exceptional support of the Musée d'Orsay.

Curated by Benjamin Foudral and Pierre Wat.