Study

Dutch seventeenth-century landscapes were avidly collected and held in high esteem in France by the late eighteenth century, but only in the Romantic era was their full influence felt in French painting. By then, study of the many moods of nature mirrored a growing interest in scientific inquiry and an intellectual fascination with change and its causes. Here, Boudin makes use of the Dutch model, pioneered by Jacob van Ruysdael, of a low horizon line and vast sky, minimizing the land in order to render more fully the artist’s observation of the passage of clouds across the sky.