Paysage, étude (La ferme)

Paysage, étude (La ferme) [Landscape, study (The Farm), 1900], at the Baltimore Museum of Art, is identified as a study — an outdoor working sketch rather than a finished exhibition canvas. Such studies formed an essential part of Renoir's practice: the plein-air observation that preceded or accompanied his studio compositions. The farm as a subject places the work in the tradition of French rural landscape painting extending from Millet and Corot through Impressionism, though Renoir's farm is never social document but aesthetic observation.

The study designation allows for a freshness and directness of handling that finished exhibition works sometimes suppress: the brushwork is likely more rapid and provisional, capturing an immediate impression rather than elaborating into a resolved composition. Paint is applied with the spontaneous confidence of outdoor working.