A Valley

Artist: Philippe Rousseau (French, 1816 - 1887)

Original Dimensions: 31 7/8" x 39 1/4"

Location: National Gallery of Art, London

About Artwork: (About 1860) "Philippe Rousseau is best known now as a still-life painter, but early in his career he painted a series of landscapes in such places as Normandy and Brittany. This landscape dates from later in his life. The view is along a sunlit valley under a bright sky. While the actual location has not been identified, the hillside at the left, which is divided into strips of small fields or kitchen gardens, is reminiscent of Pissarro’s views of the same period, painted around Pontoise to the north-west of Paris. A couple of strips are planted with rows of vegetables, perhaps cabbages, and one towards the left is sprinkled with the red of what must be poppies. The fresh cool tonality of the greens and the broad fluid brushwork set the view apart from the many landscapes painted by artists of the Barbizon School in the forest of Fontainebleau and elsewhere at the same period. Its freely painted technique can be compared to that of the early Impressionists." - (National Gallery of Art, London)