The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of September 4, 2026

A lithograph in green and brown on yellow paper depicts a landscape with rolling, contoured hills. In the center, a solitary figure stands in a sloping field holding a shovel. To the left, a wooden fence follows a ridge toward a building and dark trees. Bare, winding trees line the right hillside. In the upper third, a pale sky with two clouds hangs over the landscape, which is defined by dark, flowing lines.

Landscape

1893

Louis Paul Henri Sérusier

(French, 1864–1927)
France, 19th century
lithograph printed in green and brown on yellow paper
Sheet: 33.5 x 43.7 cm (13 3/16 x 17 3/16 in.); Image: 23.1 x 30.1 cm (9 1/8 x 11 7/8 in.)
Alma and Robert D. Milne Fund 2004.39
Catalogue raisonné: Stein and Karshan 80
Location: Not on view

Description

Twenty-four-year-old Paul Sérusier met Paul Gauguin in Brittany at the artists' colony in Pont- Aven. Sérusier enthusiastically embraced the older artist's flat, simplified forms and bold colors. He became one of Gauguin's closest disciples, promoting his aesthetic among a group of Parisian artists who became known as the Nabis-the Hebrew word for "prophets"-because they predicted a new era in art. Sérusier was primarily interested in creating decorative surfaces which juxtaposed flat planes of opposing colors. Sérusier made only a few prints during his career, but the bold, primitive-looking Breton Landscape was selected for publication in L'estampe originale, a quarterly publication of original prints that appeared from 1893 to 1895. Breton Landscape pays homage to Gauguin's Volpini Suite, a series of eleven zincographs printed on canary yellow paper in 1889. The high horizon, tilted ground, winding fence, and geometric shapes of the fields echo details in Gauguin's Breton Women by a Fence.
  • {{cite web|title=Landscape|url=false|author=Louis Paul Henri Sérusier|year=1893|access-date=04 September 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2004.39