Rousseau traveled frequently in the French provinces and in 1844, with Dupré, visited the region known as the Landes in the southwest of France, where he produced work of penetrating observation and careful execution. This canvas was probably painted shortly after that trip, about 1845. As in many of his landscapes of the mid-1840s, Rousseau here arranged the distant planes in parallel strips, a compositional device that he called "planimetric."

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