Landscape and Maternity

Landscape is a beautiful drawing realized by the French artist Michel Dumas in the mid-19th century. The state of preservation is very good, except for some light folds on the higher margin.

In gray pencil with some light marks in sanguine, there is the study of a landscape in the countryside that comprises also the complex architecture of a hamlet made up of big buildings with arches and pediments. The stroke is simple and precise, probably drawn from real life.

Completely different is the drawing of the study of a nude mother crouching whilst holding a child. This drawing is beautiful and emotionally engaging in the wonderful gesture of the mother holding on her small child tight.

Michel Dumas was a French painter from Lyons. He was a pupil of Grobon and Bonnefond at the School of Fine Arts in Lyons. He moved to Paris, where he entered the workshop of Ingres, with whom he established a lifelong friendship. Thanks to the income from private commissions, he left for Rome, where he has stayed, with Ingres, for 16 years. He ended his career in his hometown as professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyons and died in 1878.

This piece, in its double significance, is very interesting also as work realized by an important French artist of 1800.