Probably painted during one of the
voyages of his house-boat studio "Le Bottin," in which the painter
passed many summers.]

[Illustration: THE STORMY SEA. FROM A PAINTING BY JULES DUPRE.

This powerful picture gives an idea of the dramatic force of one who
has been fitly termed a symphonic painter.]

[Illustration: A SUNLIT GLADE. FROM A PAINTING BY LEON GERMAIN
PELOUSE.

A remarkable rendering of intricate detail without sacrifice of
general effect, this picture, nevertheless, gives somewhat the
impression of a photograph from nature.]

In the meantime, however, Rousseau's fame had grown, fostered by the
more advanced critics of the time. He lived at Barbizon, on the border
of the forest of Fontainebleau; and, basing his work on the most
uncompromising study of nature, his pictures bore an impress of simple
truth, which to our latter-day vision seems so obvious and easily
understood that nothing could show more clearly the depth of error
into which his opponents had fallen than the systematic rejection
of his work for so many years. He was by nature a leader, and in his
country home he was soon joined by Millet and Charles Jacque, while in
Paris he had the hearty support of Delacroix and his followers of the
Romantic school. While forced by circumstances to find allies in these
men, Rousseau had, however, but little of the imaginative temperament.
He was, above all, the close student of natural phenomena. He sat,
an impartial recorder of the phases of nature's triumphal procession.
Early and late, in the fields, among the rocks, or under the trees
of the forest, his cunning hand noted an innumerable variety of facts
which before him, through ignorance or disdain, the landscape painter
had never seen. It is but fair to say that, like all pioneers in the
untrodden fields of art, his means of expression at times failed to
keep pace with his intention. His work is occasionally overburdened
with detail, through the embarrassment of riches which nature poured
at his feet. Then, heir to the processes of painting of former
generations, it seemed to him necessary to endow nature with a warmth
of coloring, an abuse of the richer tones of the palette, which we may
presume he would have discarded but for the fact already noted, that
a painter carries through his earthly pilgrimage a baggage of
early-formed habits difficult to throw off _en route_. The belief that
color to be beautiful must of necessity be warm, rich, and d