The rainbow

When this canvas was exhibited for the first time at the Tentoonstelling van Levende Meesters (Exhibition of Living Masters) in 1875, it was still called Evening of a rainy autumn day. Gram, a contemporary critic, called it a ‘risky undertaking to paint nature in all her frickleness, after the storm, with the sun breaking through’. Although the fleeting effect of the rainbow is reminiscent of Landscape before a storm, the subject is treated differently in this later picture owing to the clearly discernible influence of the Barbizon School. Roelofs had spent some time in Barbizon and the Forest of Fontainebleau and had also studied the paintings of Troyon, Rousseau and Dupré. This painting comes closest to Le Printemps by Jean-François Millet (Musée du Louvre), painted between 1868 and 1874, although it is not clear whether Roelofs had seen Millet’s picture.

Source: R. de Leeuw, J. Sillevis, Ch. Dumas (eds.), The Hague School: Dutch masters of the 19th century, The Hague 1983.