Beech Tree

Achille-Etna Michallon

by 1817 · Oil on canvas · European Paintings

Michallon exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon in 1812, at the age of sixteen, and he was awarded the inaugural Prix de Rome in the category of historical landscape painting in 1817; it is likely that this study dates to the period in between, when, as a pupil of Jean Victor Bertin, he was instructed to render individual trees. One characteristic feature is the way in which the sky is filtered by the tree canopy, limning the right edge of this graceful beech and its slender companions with golden light.

Artist

Achille-Etna Michallon

Date

by 1817

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

European Paintings

Credit line

Thaw Collection, Jointly Owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Eugene V. Thaw, 2009