From Chateau Fashion to the Forest of Fontainebleau: New Arrivals in the 19th-Century Paintings Galleries (Works-in-Dialogue)

Date: Friday, December 7, 2007
Time: 1:00–3:00 p.m.
Location: Getty Center, Museum Lecture Hall and Museum galleries
Course Fee: $15. Open to 100 participants.

The 19th-century paintings galleries—home to Van Gogh's Irises, Monet's Wheatstacks, and other masterpieces of European painting—are always changing. Get to know two new residents of these galleries, Jacques Joseph Tissot's Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon and Théodore Rousseau's Forest of Fontainebleau, Cluster of Tall Trees, in this afternoon gallery course that combines gallery tours and a lecture.

Assistant paintings curator Scott Allan sets the stage with a lecture on the two paintings, which represent two poles of 19th-century French art. Gallery teachers then lead participants into the galleries in small groups to explore the paintings up close and discuss their meaning.

About the Two Paintings
Both paintings joined the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2007. Tissot's portrait depicts a 30-year-old heiress standing in her husband's chateau, surrounded by decorative objects fashionable during France's Second Empire. Full of closely observed details of upper-class domesticity, the portrait presents the spectacularly dressed marquise as elegant, pensive, and fragile.

Rousseau's landscape is a dramatic, magical late-afternoon scene dominated by oaks. Rousseau rendered the trunk, gnarled limbs, and foliage of a live oak in an extraordinarily nuanced range of earthy greens and browns. The artist loved the oaks of Fontainebleau so much that he petitioned a high government official to stop the commercial exploitation of the forest's trees and rocks.

About Works-in-Dialogue
The Works-in-Dialogue series explores loans and new acquisitions that enliven the "dialogue" among paintings in the Museum's permanent collection.





How to Get Here
The Getty Center is located at 1200 Getty Center Drive in Los Angeles, California, approximately 12 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. See Hours, Directions, Parking for directions and parking information.