This “affamement d’un amour de la nature qui ne se rassasie jamais” Landscapes and landscapers in Barbey d’Aurevilly’s art criticism

While landscape in the visual arts occupies a marginal place in Barbey’s art criticism, it is not in his eyes a minor genre, as long as it is enhanced by originality, intensity, energy, and spirituality. The landscape artist of genius (such as Théodore Rousseau or Jean-François Millet), in his hunger for nature and his passionate determination to scrutinize and paint it, would seem to be an ideal writer-critic; the landscape, as the sensitive, demanding model for a possible kind of writing.