Breton Landscape
1881 - 1890. Oil on canvas.Not on display
From an unexpected, non-central location, Jiménez Aranda´s present panel depicts a view of some simple rural houses of undoubtedly French origin. In the foreground, a haystack containing the grain harvested by the peasants can be seen, indicating that these landscape studies were executed during the summer. This specific example is related to the peasant themes already explored at that time by the artist’s brother Luis and by Sánchez Perrier. Moreover, this work is very close in its conception and execution to other copies developed years later in the pine woods and surroundings of Alcalá de Guadaira.
These studies and approaches to the elements and values of landscape, in fact, represent an aspect of the modernisation that took place in this decade of intense activity by the painter. Due to the context and to an increasingly generalised trend towards the cultivation of landscape ‘in itself’, the artist would be close to the phenomenon, already widespread, of the gathering of artists in Barbizon, especially in the summer season.José Jiménez Aranda 1837-1903, Sevilla, Fundacion el Monte, 2005, p.268, nº 27
