Landscape in the Orne

Eugène Carrière's Landscape in the Orne, painted in 1901 and held at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, is an unusual excursion from his predominantly figurative and portrait practice into landscape — though the atmospheric, tonal character of his approach gives even this outdoor subject the psychological intensity typical of his portraits. The Orne department in Normandy was a region of rolling agricultural landscape and river valleys, and Carrière's treatment of it through his signature monochromatic palette transforms the outdoor scene into something close to interior meditation. The RISD holding is one of the better American examples of his landscape work.

Carrière reduces the Normandy landscape to warm brown tones and subtle tonal gradations, applying to outdoor subject matter the same atmospheric dissolution he brought to his portraits. The result is a landscape that feels seen through a veil of memory rather than directly observed — characteristically Carrière in its refusal of obvious colour.