Landscape - Hillside in Gruchy, Normandy

Famous as a painter of rural life, in the late 1860s Millet focused on the spa town of Vichy in south central France, where his ailing wife sought a cure in thermal springs. This striking ink drawing may depict Vichy or Millet’s home of Gruchy, Normandy, where he stayed in 1870–71, during the Franco-Prussian War. Here the landscape—with an unusually raised horizon line—dominates rural life.