Auguste Morisot (1857-1951), The Ploughman In Colors, Chanly (belgium Ardennes), 1929

Oil on paper. Monogrammed, dated, and located lower left. 32 × 48.5 cm.
Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, Auguste Morisot belongs to that generation of artists for whom landscape became the setting of a spiritual meditation. In 1886, he was sent to Venezuela with the explorer Jean Chaffanjon to trace the course of the Orinoco River, returning with an exceptionally rich illustrated journal later used by Jules Verne for *Le Superbe Orénoque*. Back in France, he taught for nearly half a century in Lyon, developing a singular body of work—initially close to the Barbizon school, then gradually imbued with a mystical Symbolism.
Painted in Chanly, in the Belgian Ardennes where Morisot spent every summer from 1921 onward, this oil on paper represents the most poetic phase of his production. On a gentle slope, a ploughman leads his team toward the horizon. The scene, reduced to its simplest essence, exalts the silent dignity of rural labor. The diagonal of the field structures the composition, while the small scale of the figures against the vastness of the landscape evokes man’s fragility within nature’s cycle.
The sky, bathed in soft mauves and powdery pinks, melts into the tranquil light of dusk. Through the delicacy of his palette and the slowness of gesture, Morisot transforms this pastoral vision into an allegory of the sacred bond uniting man and earth. The whole radiates a meditative serenity, where light becomes a symbol of hope and continuity.