1856
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Mill and Waterfall of Grésy near Aix-les-Bains is a 1856 by Eugène Blery, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This etching shows a rocky stream tumbling past a small mill. The water looks real enough to dip your fingers in. Trees rise up the banks, their leaves detailed like lace. Bléry worked outside in all weathers. He copied old Dutch prints, then built his own scenes from them. The rocks feel heavy, the sky feels big—like nature won’t be rushed. You’ll see his careful lines next to Meindert Hobbema’s work at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Bléry worked directly from nature or from his own drawings, and his landscape etchings are meticulous, delicate, and highly wrought. He was deeply influenced by Dutch 17th-century landscapes, particularly those by Meindert Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael, both of whom Bléry copied. The Mill and Waterfall of Grésy near Aix-les-Bains is one of the artist’s original compositions and reveals the attention that he lavished on the natural world. The Romantic overtones of this composition are related to numerous German landscapes of the period.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Eugène Stanislas Alexandre Bléry (3 March 1805–7 June 1887), was a French engraver.
See the richer artist page
