In this drawing, the standing trees lean toward the fallen in an almost human manner. Rousseau was deeply concerned about tree cutting in the forests of France and was an early advocate of preservation. He was the most important landscape painter of the Barbizon School—a group of artists whose work focused on the countryside in and around the forest of Fontainebleau (south of Paris). Although Rousseau’s landscapes often include humans or animals, trees usually dominate his compositions.