Rousseau undertook frequent sketching expeditions in the French provinces. In 1844, along with fellow landscapist Jules Dupré (1811–1889), he visited the Landes region in the southwest, where he made works distinctive for their penetrating observation and careful execution. This canvas was probably painted shortly afterward, about 1845. As in many of his landscapes of the mid-1840s, Rousseau arranged the distant planes in parallel strips, a compositional device that he called "planimetric."

Inscription: Signed (lower left): TH.Rousseau.

?[P. L. Everard and Co., London, until 1873; sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 28, 1873, no. 58, as "Pâturage; prairie de Normandie," for Fr 11,000]; [Isidore Montaignac, Paris, until 1899; sold on April 8 for Fr 88,000 to Boussod-Valadon]; [Boussod-Valadon, Paris, 1899; stock no. 25849, as "Prairie bordée d'arbres. Village au fond"; sold on August 19, for Fr 156,000, to Dun]; Robert Graham Dun, New York (1899–d. 1900; life interest to his widow, Mary D. Bradford Dun, 1900–d. 1910)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Taste of the Seventies," April 2–September 10, 1946, no. 150.

Detroit Institute of Arts. "French Painting from David to Courbet," February 1–March 5, 1950, no. 87 (as "Meadow Bordered by Trees").

American Federation of the Arts. "A Landscape View of 19th Century France (circulating exhibition)," September 1, 1954–1957, no catalogue?

Albany. New York State Museum. "French Painters of Nature; The Barbizon School: Landscapes from The Metropolitan Museum of Art," May 22–August 22, 2004, no catalogue.

P. W. "Sammlungen und Ausstellungen." Kunstchronik 12 (January 24, 1901), p. 200.

B[ryson]. B[urroughs]. "Recent Accessions." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 6 (April 1911), p. 98, ill. p. 101, as "Meadow, Bordered by Trees".

Charles Sterling, and Margaretta M. Salinger. "XIX Century." French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2, New York, 1966, pp. 80–81, ill., suggest the influence of seventeenth-century painters such as Philips Koninck in the arrangement of distant planes into parallel strips.

Nicolai Cikovsky Jr. George Inness. New York, 1971, p. 31, fig. 9, compares it to Inness's "Clearing Up" (1860; George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, Springfield, Mass.).

Michel Schulman with Marie Bataillès. Théodore Rousseau, 1812–1867: Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint. Paris, 1999, p. 241, no. 420, ill., dates it 1847–52.