Gathering Storm

Michel became acquainted with Dutch 17th-century landscape painting when he was employed as a restorer by the Louvre Museum at the beginning of the 19th century. He was an important precursor of the Barbizon artists. He became a landscape painter and worked in the vicinity of Paris, especially near Montmartre and on the plains of St. Denis to the north. Observing the landscape from a height-he was probably seated on a hilltop-Michel has painted a flat, panoramic view with a low, heavy sky threatening a storm. This painting exhibits the broad, lyrical brushstrokes and sharp contrasts in light and shadow that characterized his mature style of the 1830s.