Oxen before a Farmhouse at Le Verrier

Decamps's Oxen before a Farmhouse at Le Verrier, painted around 1853, represents the artist's later work when he turned from his famous Orientalist subjects to scenes of rural French life. Le Verrier was a village in the Picardy region where Decamps retreated in his later years. These rustic subjects, painted with his characteristic thick impasto and warm tonality, show the influence of Dutch seventeenth-century animal and farmyard paintings that Decamps admired.

Decamps's oil-on-wood technique features heavily textured paint application, with thick impasto in sunlit areas creating an almost sculptural surface. The warm earth tones and strong contrasts of light and shadow give the humble farmyard scene a dramatic Romantic intensity.