Lost Barbizon oil sketch rediscovered at the Milwaukee Art Museum

An important oil sketch lost to scholars for more than 140 years has been rediscovered at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The true identity of the work was obscured by an old attribution to English landscape painter John Constable (1776–1837). Research and conservation revealed it is actually the study for the major 1833 Salon painting by Theodore Rousseau (1812–1867), View on the Outskirts of Granville, in the collection of The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Visitors to the Milwaukee Art Museum will have the opportunity to see the oil sketch in person at the upcoming exhibition Constable? A Landscape Rediscovered, opening September 7, 2018. The exhibition marks the painting’s debut with its correct attribution and investigates the provenance of the work, which entered the Layton Art Collection, Inc. as a gift from Arthur Nye McGeoch (1869–1949), a prominent Milwaukee financier, art collector and real estate magnate.