Farm in the Landes

Farm in the Landes, from 1859 and now at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, shows Rousseau extending his landscape vision beyond the Fontainebleau environs to the Landes — the vast flat pine forest and heathland of southwestern France, among the most distinctive and remote agricultural landscapes in the country. Rousseau traveled extensively within France throughout his career, and these regional expeditions produced bodies of work that broadened the Barbizon project beyond the Île-de-France. The Landes farmstead, isolated in its flat, windswept setting, is treated with the same attentive dignity Rousseau brought to Fontainebleau forest interiors — the buildings integrated into a landscape that dwarfs them. The Clark Art Institute, with its exceptional collection of French Romantic and Barbizon painting assembled by Sterling and Francine Clark, holds several important Rousseau canvases. The 1859 date places this in the mature period of his career.

The canvas establishes the Landes landscape's characteristic flatness through a low horizon and an expansive sky that dominates the upper two-thirds of the composition. The farmstead is placed low in the pictorial space, its horizontal profile echoing the landscape's own horizontality. Warm ochres and pines dominate the palette.