Rocks and Birch Trees is a highly emblematic painting for Romanian landscape painting in the latter quarter of the 19th century. It reveals Andreescu’s wish to catch up with contemporary European developments, as artists’ interest shifts from representing a particular place or motif toward visual construction, colour relationships and the interplay of light and shadow.
The reddish-brown foliage and the coloured greys of the rocks alternate with the dominant blue sky against which rise the majestic crowns of the birch trees. Colour sensations are spectacularly transposed onto the canvas by Andreescu, whose fresh brushwork naturally blends light into colour. This is the lesson he learned at Fontainebleau while working side by side with painters who, like their predecessors Jean-François Millet and Théodore Rousseau, had gradually come to master the technique of working in the open air, free of all formal solemnity.
