Originally from Lyon, Hippolyte Flandrin is one of the renowned Flandrin brothers. Upon winning the Prix de Rome in 1832, he started his artistic training in Italy, where he remained until 1836. At the Villa Medici, he became one of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ most talented pupils.
In Italy the artist discovered nature, which he rendered relentlessly and skillfully with watercolour and pencil in his sketchbooks. Upon his return to France, the artist specialised in creating religious paintings in the Neoclassical style. He nonetheless continued to cultivate his interest in landscape drawing, through which he could capture the peaceful beauty of the outdoors.
Our sheet is a rare example of Flandrin’s poetic use of pastels. His pastel drawings reveal that even within the circle of Ingres’ most orthodox students, visions of remarkable purity could emerge. The artist’s use of blue pastel crystallises his extreme departure from Neoclassicism which pushes the composition to the threshold of abstraction.