Pastoral Scene

This row of Lombardy Poplars, a landscape design staple in France and America since the mid-18th century, stands sentinel over a pastoral setting of red-spotted cows and a peaceful stream. Chauncey Ryder organizes these landscape elements to offer a balance between the upright forms of the trees and the low horizon.

From the mid-1860s onwards, artists like James McNeill Whistler and Claude Monet looked to the landscape for artistic experimentation. Ryder, having spent much of his career in France, also saw landscape as the means to explore his painterly ends. His wandering walks through France and the American Northeast produced markedly sophisticated views of rural scenery.