Gust of Wind on the Poplars

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

At a time when most landscape artists favored dramatic Italian views, Auguste Allongé depicted the terrain of his native France and especially the forest of Fontainebleau, outside Paris. This sheet shows poplar trees along a river, bending slightly with the suggestion of a breeze. Allongé worked traditionally with charcoal, drawing on paper, but also removed the material throughout using a stump to create highlights and dramatic tonal variation. Auguste Allongé was known for the complex charcoal techniques used in this drawing, and in fact derived a large part of his fame from Le Fusain , a manual for drawing with charcoal published in 1873 and translated into several languages over the following decade.