Paris, vu des hauteurs du Père Lachaise

Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont's Paris, vu des hauteurs du Père Lachaise (1850) offers a view of Paris from the elevated vantage point of the Père Lachaise cemetery — the famous necropolis on the eastern hills of the city opened in 1804, which by 1850 had become both the resting place of France's greatest citizens and a favoured destination for Romantic walkers seeking melancholy urban panoramas. Sarazin de Belmont was one of the few women landscape painters to succeed in the French academic tradition; she exhibited regularly at the Salon and received state commissions. This view combines topography with Romantic feeling for the relationship between the living city and its dead.

Sarazin de Belmont exploits the elevated viewpoint to render Paris as a panoramic spread beneath an atmospheric sky, the city's monuments identifiable against the horizon. The cemetery's funerary monuments and cypress trees frame the foreground, creating a contrast between the stillness of the burial ground and the living city below. The palette is atmospheric — pale blues, greys, and greens — characteristic of her landscape work.