Landscape with Hills

Rousseau's Landscape with Hills from around 1840 shows him working with the rolling terrain of the French uplands during his middle period, when he was extending his range of landscape subjects beyond Fontainebleau while maintaining the concentrated naturalist observation that characterized his approach. The broad rolling hills—a subject quite different from his forest interiors—allowed Rousseau to explore spatial recession across open terrain, the relationship between sky and earth, and the atmospheric effects of weather over undulating ground. The work belongs to the decade of his greatest Salon difficulties, when continued official rejection drove him toward an increasingly independent vision of landscape as fact rather than decorative convention. These varied landscape types from his touring years demonstrate that Barbizon was a base of operations rather than a limitation on his range.

The undulating hills create gentle rhythms across the composition, rendered in warm, earthy tones with Rousseau's characteristic attention to atmospheric effects. The layered paint surface captures subtle variations in terrain and vegetation.