1840
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Landscape Near Paris is a 1840 unspecified by Georges Michel, a Realism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a moody French landscape with rolling hills and a wide, cloudy sky. The brushstrokes look rough and thick in spots, giving it a raw feel. Light hits the hills just right, making the scene feel alive even on a gray day. Georges Michel rarely left France. He painted only local spots, unlike most artists of his time. He studied Dutch landscape painters like Jacob van Ruisdael but made his scenes feel more wild and real. Check out the thick paint style called impasto if you want to see how he built up color.
The location of this scene, probably near Paris, has not been identified with certainty. Unlike most painters of this time, Michel never traveled to Italy and focused only on depicting locations in France. Michel was always interested in Dutch art, however, and was nicknamed the "French Ruisdael"-a reference to the 17th-century Dutch landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682). After about 1808, Michel explored personal interpretations of landscape, focusing on light, sky, and space. The brooding, vaguely threatening atmosphere in this painting embodies the Romantic notion that human…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Georges Bernard Michel (12 January 1763, Paris – 8 June 1843, Paris) was a French landscape painter. His works are considered to be a precursor of the Barbizon School.
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