Painting: The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau Forest
Artist: Claude Monet
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 37 7/8 x 50 7/8 in. (96.2 x 129.2 cm)
Style: Impressionism
Signed (lower right): Claude Monet
Gift of Sam Salz and Bequest of Julia W. Emmons, by exchange, 1964 (64.210)
This view of the Fontainebleau forest is thought to be an early study for an ambitious picnic scene, Dejeuner sur l’herbe, which Monet never finished. (Fragments of it are now at the Musee d’Orsay, Paris.) The large oak had been depicted by several artists in the mid-1800s; it was unofficially named after the Swiss painter Karl Bodmer, who had exhibited a view of it in the Salon of 1850.