Classical Landscape (1779): Art, History and Details

Classical Landscape (1779) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pierre Henri de Valenciennes (French, 1750–1819).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the 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.

Object facts

• Title: Classical Landscape
• Date: 1779
• Creator attribution: Pierre Henri de Valenciennes (French, 1750–1819)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black gouache and brush and gray wash, over black chalk and graphite, heightened with white gouache
• 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.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1980.91

A detail from the museum

The ritual seen here, in which women cut their hair and offer it to a god, is rarely depicted in the visual arts.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Exhibition of French Drawings: Neo-Classicism. Exh. Cat. London: Heim Gallery, 1975.
• Rohowsky, Peter S. Nineteenth Century French and Other Continental Watercolors and Oil Sketches. Exh. Cat. New York: Shepherd Gallery, 1979.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163–219.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.