Théodore Caruelle Aligny

Description

Thanks to the inscription, we can place the present drawing among the group of works created by Aligny during his directorship of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. Although these years were considered to be the height of his official career, Aligny continued to produce studies from life, like the present drawing, which informed his studio paintings with a profound knowledge of nature. While the debt to Corot here is obvious, the confident and economical linearity of the draftsmanship bespeak a mature artist, able to summarize the complexities of a rural landscape into a graceful composition filled with bucolic calm. Yzeron is about 30 km west of Lyon.