”Figures collecting water in a Arcadian  landscape”, this painting around 1820 was executed by famous French Jean-Charles-Joseph Rémond (1795 - Paris - 1875). He was a pupil of Jean-Victor Bertin and Jean-Baptiste Regnault. He won the Grand Prix de Rome award with his “L'Enlèvement de Proserpine par Pluton” in 1821. 

The young artist spent the next five years in Italy painting sketches in the open air. There he joined other artists who had traveled to the Italian campagna, who, distanced from their homes, were freed from the pressures of the commercial art world and were able to devote themselves completely to the pleasures of painting. Guided purely by their senses and without the controlled lighting of the studio, painters were forced to employ a technique of rapid sketching that captured the essence of the light and contours of the hills, valleys and coastline of the Italian peninsula. His experience started the young artist on a career dedicated to the landscape and culminated in his tutelage of the young Théodore Rousseau, one of the founding artists of the Barbizon School.

Rémond, who devoted himself to landscape history, ceased to exhibit in 1848.

In the academic hierarchy of late 18th-century art, landscape painting was considered inferior in comparison to history, portrait and genre painting. This perception gradually changed at the end of the century when the Neo-Classical landscape artists introduced the 'historical landscape', a genre looking back to the classical landscape tradition of the 17th century.

After 1810, the attitude towards these historical landscapes changed significantly and they were regarded as important as the traditional history painting. Many of the artists who dedicated their oeuvres to this category were winners of the Prix de Rome for historical landscape, a prize introduced in 1817 to enable young artists to study in Italy.

Provenance: sale of Christie's, London on 2.01.2015; Italian private estate.

Literature: arist lexicon by Benezit; Encyclopédie Larousse; in online: wikipedia; web gallery (wga.hu).

Inscription: remainder of signature lower under stone.

Technique: oil on canvas, original period gilt frame.

Measurements: unframed w 18 1/4" x h 15"  (46,3 x 38 cm); framed 23" x 19 7/8" (58,5 x 50,5 cm).

Condition: good, no inpaintings or losses.