Description
Michel became acquainted with Dutch 17th-century landscape painting when he was employed as a restorer by the Louvre Museum at the beginning of the 19th century. He was an important precursor of the Barbizon artists. He became a landscape painter and worked in the vicinity of Paris, especially near Montmartre and on the plains of St. Denis to the north. Observing the landscape from a height-he was probably seated on a hilltop-Michel has painted a flat, panoramic view with a low, heavy sky threatening a storm. This painting exhibits the broad, lyrical brushstrokes and sharp contrasts in light and shadow that characterized his mature style of the 1830s.
Provenance
The George A. Lucas Collection, Baltimore [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, May 9, 1910, by bequest [Henry Walters as executor]; Walters Art Museum, 1996, by purchase.
Credit
Museum purchase with exchange funds from the gifts of Mrs. T. Willing Balch, Mrs. Ludlow Baldwin, Mrs. Joseph Bryan III, Gabriele Bruck, Misses Elizabeth L. and Louise M. Clark, Mrs. Denison Frick, Mr. David R. Harrison, Mrs. Frances W. Haussner, The Haussner Family Limited Partnership, Mr. Martin Horowitz, Mrs. Jane Lipman in memory of Leroy and Elizabeth Lipman, the estate of Rita Lowenstein, Mrs. Thelma Pierce, Sara D. Redmond, Harriet Rowland, Louis E. Shecter, Mrs. Henriette Stevens, James and Jean Tebay, and William C. Whittridge, and the bequests of Miss Laura F. Delano, Laura Delano Eastman, Mrs. Ruth Mangels Wineholt Eppler, Mr. Stephen Glazer, Mr. Philip B. Perlman, Mary Saunders Ward, Mrs. Frances Eaton Weld, and H. Morris Whitehurst, 1996–2008
