Large Landscape with a Tree

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The Georges Pompidou Center, Paris (France).

From 1953, living in Chassy, ​​Balthus has created many landscapes, including six paintings with a view from the window. This large canvas is the last in this series and repeats the picture of 1954. The bright winter sunlight covered the red fields behind the fence in the background. In the foreground, the cold shadows from the geometrically depicted buildings are so thick that the small figure of a person going far from the viewer is barely noticeable. The cubic volumes of buildings, gates, columns and shadows contrast with the flexible network of the branches of a large tree and turn the ordinary landscape into a philosophical one.