Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

The collection of John Chandler Bancroft, Middletown, Rhode Island

Gustave J. S. White Co., Auctioneers, Newport, Rhode Island, 1989

Acquired from the above by a New England antiques dealer

To the present owners, 1989

Visible in this image of Franchard, the rocky area on the western edge of Fontainebleau, is a stand of pine trees.  These non-native trees were introduced to the forest for the express purpose of harvesting for lumber.  As Greg M. Thomas, to whom this entry is indebted, recounts in his book Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau (Princeton University Press, 2000), timber production had replaced hunting as the primary function of Fontainebleau by the 1830s.  In that decade, forest manager Achille Marrier de Boisd'hyver systematically planted pine trees throughout the forest, sometimes felling whole groves of native oak, beech, and birch trees in the process.  The fast-growing pines quickly became a noticeable feature on the Fontainebleau landscape, and Franchard, as well as nearby Apremont, were in danger of becoming overgrown.

The artists of Fontainebleau were alarmed that the appearance of their beloved forest could be so drastically altered.  Rousseau in particular was sufficiently angered to draft a petition to Napoleon III.  In it, he deplored the clear-cutting of the forest, writing 'the forest administration indiscriminately cuts down trees whose great age, fame, and artistic beauty should make them respected, and in other areas of the forest they sow in profusion uncountable quantities of Northern Pines that are wiping out this forest's old Gaul character and will soon give us the severe and sad look of Russian forests' (ibid., p. 215). 

Gauss does not account for this image, made from negative number 274, in her census.