The Mill and Waterfall of Grésy near Aix-les-Bains

Bléry worked directly from nature or from his own drawings, and his landscape etchings are meticulous,
delicate, and highly wrought. He was deeply influenced by Dutch 17th-century landscapes, particularly those by Meindert Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael, both of whom Bléry copied. The Mill and Waterfall of Grésy near Aix-les-Bains is one of the artist’s original compositions and reveals the attention that he lavished on the natural world. The Romantic overtones of this composition are related to numerous German landscapes of the period (see particularly Albert Christoph Dies’s Saint Rocco Waterfall and Bridge at Tivoli, elsewhere in the exhibition).