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Classical Landscape
Pierre Henri de Valenciennes (French, 1750–1819)
1779
- Medium
- black gouache and brush and gray wash, over black chalk and graphite, heightened with white gouache
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 41.3 x 48.3 cm (16 1/4 x 19 in.); Secondary Support: 43.6 x 52.1 cm (17 3/16 x 20 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The leading landscape painter of the late 18th century, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes was also an important theoretician whose book Elements of Practical Perspective influenced generations of French artists who followed. In the book, the artist described two ways of envisioning nature: "seeing it as it is," and "seeing it as it could be." He preferred the latter, believing that it demanded more of the imagination than merely copying the natural world. The perfection of the setting in this drawing reflects the noble, classical subject: three maidens cutting their hair and offering it on an altar to a river god.
