Landscape Near Paris

Georges Michel painted this landscape near Paris around 1840, continuing his lifelong devotion to the unprepossessing terrain surrounding the French capital. By the 1840s, Michel was elderly and increasingly forgotten by the art world, though he continued to paint the windmills, fields, and dramatic skies of the Parisian periphery. His work was rediscovered after his death and recognized as an important precursor to the Barbizon school and the Impressionist landscape tradition.

Michel's heavily textured brushwork builds the landscape through accumulated layers of earth-toned paint. The low horizon and dominant sky follow the Dutch landscape tradition he admired, with vigorous, almost turbulent brushstrokes conveying weather and atmosphere with expressive force.