In the Forest (1841): Art, History and Details

In the Forest (1841) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Célestin François Nanteuil (French, 1813–1873).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

With its beautifully rendered trees, grassy slopes, and water bathed in late afternoon sunlight, this painting clearly suggests Nanteuil's love of nature. In 1837 he wrote to a friend: "I often spend several hours . . . looking at beautiful plants with large leaves, cut out like sumptuous lace, tall grasses in ponds, their color silky and the beautiful reflections they make in the water, the little flowers with thousands of colours the ground is embroidered with, all provide me with a source of enjoyment." Although the forest Nanteuil described seems very real, his painting includes a satyr. Seated on a stone near a stream, the half human, half goat mythological figure seems lost in the music he plays upon his pipes. Nanteuil is most famous for his lithographs and etchings; paintings by the artist are rather rare.

Object facts

• Title: In the Forest
• Date: 1841
• Creator attribution: Célestin François Nanteuil (French, 1813–1873)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 123.2 x 155.6 x 12.7 cm (48 1/2 x 61 1/4 x 5 in.); Unframed: 97 x 129.8 cm (38 3/16 x 51 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1977.125

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Talbot, William S. “Some French Landscapes: 1779-1842.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 3 (March 1978): 75–91.
• Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.