View of the Falls at Tivoli

Michallon learned from his teacher, Pierre Henri de Valenciennes, to go out of doors and "seize Nature" by painting "maquettes made in haste," without concern for finishing details. This iconic view was painted during Michallon’s residency at the Villa Medici in Rome, where he was the earliest laureate in the field of historical landscape painting. It was first owned by Alexandre-Emile de L’Espine, a longtime friend of the artist and one of the era’s greatest collectors of oil sketches. In 1820, L’Espine visited Michallon in Italy, which must have deepened his appreciation of the immediacy of informal works like this one. In time, such sketches provided a welcome alternative to collectors accustomed to the slick, highly finished productions associated with the then-dominant Neoclassical school of painting.