Henri-Joseph Harpignies

Bio

A great admirer of Corot, Harpignies favored carefully chosen viewpoints and a skillful balance between precise detail and clever simplification to give his views of the French countryside a timeless monumentality. He offset the conservative character of his compositions with bold colors and a breadth of paint handling that were demonstrably modern. In the triumphant advance of landscape painting during the second half of the nineteenth-century, Harpignies was a particularly influential master.