Plateau de Belle Croix. Forêt de Fontainebleau.

In this highly atmospheric, romantic etching, evocative - probably unconsciously - of the beautiful precision and humility towards nature of Caspar David Friedrich, we see three ancient, leafless oaks standing out against a buttermilk sky. Glacial boulders surround a brackish pond and an unknown man, probably rendered deliberately small, poses with a staff at the centre. The scens is located in the Forest of Fontainebleau, the favoured location of the Barbizon School of French realist painters including Corot and Daubigny. The printmaker Alfred Joseph Dannequin (d. 1890) was a little-known associate of the Barbizon School.

See: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,  https://art.famsf.org/alfred-joseph-dannequin/plateau-de-belle-croix-19633029507

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    November 2018