Landscape of the South of France (Paysage du Midi)

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

Soutine depicts a church swallowed up by a turbulent southern French landscape. While the building's belltower stands erect, the main vessel stretches at an alarming angle across roiling hills crackling with acidic pinks, yellows, and purples. A black, leafless tree seems to claw at the scene. Soutine's passionately distorted image recalls the Byzantine tradition of landscape painting, as seen in the Post-Byzantine Nativity in Room 15.

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