French school, late 19th century, Landscape by a river, oil on paper

This river landscape, executed in oil on paper, reflects the vitality of outdoor study in French painting in the second half of the 19th century. The composition, stretched in a panoramic format, sensitively captures the luminous and tranquil atmosphere of a riverbank. The choice of paper as a support, a common practice among landscape painters of this period, gives the work the freshness and spontaneity characteristic of sketches from nature. The whole is part of the tradition of the landscape painters of the Barbizon school and their successors, who made the river and its banks a favoured motif of modern painting.