Kaal rotslandschap, op de voorgrond links een waterval 1832 - 1885

Rodolphe Bresdin made this drawing of a bare rocky landscape with a waterfall using pen and ink, in nineteenth-century France. Bresdin was an artist who was never part of the French art establishment, never exhibited at the Salon, and only achieved recognition posthumously. He was a bohemian, who admired the Dutch masters, whose vision of art as a calling put him at odds with the increasingly commercialized art world of the time. Notice how his drawing has an almost gothic quality, even though it's not overtly religious. Bresdin became known as one of the precursors of the Symbolist movement. Like the Symbolists, he valued personal artistic vision over academic or social conventions, setting the stage for the avant-garde movements of the 20th century. Historians study his letters and his work to understand the perspective of an artist working outside the mainstream, thus challenging the artistic institutions of his time.