Landscape (Paysage)

Description

March 28, 2009
Although Decamps was known as one of the first painters to travel to North Africa and Asia Minor, he spent much of his youth on the north coast of France in Picardie. From these early years, he developed an interest in images of peasants at work, subjects he would have known from direct observation.
Born in Paris, Decamps traveled to Asia Minor in his youth and reproduced Near Eastern life and scenery with a fidelity to nature that puzzled conventional critics of the time. His skills soon came to be recognized, and he was ranked along with Delacroix as one of the leaders of the French school of painting. Decamps’ style was marked by vivid dramatic conception, bold and even rough brushstrokes, and, as seen here, startling contrasts of color and of light and shade. His subjects embraced an unusually wide range, from scriptural history to historical subjects and genre pictures, many imbued, as here, with an interest in the everyday—an interest that can be seen as paving the way for the Impressionists and their interest in direct observation of the commonplace.