Fotoreproductie van Bestiaux au pâturage door Constant Troyon before 1893

Alexandre created this ‘Fotoreproductie van Bestiaux au pâturage door Constant Troyon’ sometime between 1855 and 1925, held at the Rijksmuseum. The photograph presents a muted landscape scene, dominated by soft, diffuse light and muted tones that lend a sense of tranquility. The composition emphasizes horizontality, with the line of the pasture stretching across the frame, grounding the grazing livestock. These elements, however, are merely representational. What Alexandre does here is to provide us with a commentary on pastoral life. The image is carefully structured; the placement of the animals and the clumps of trees create a rhythm that pulls the viewer's eye across the scene. Alexandre’s structural arrangement functions as a signifier, a symbolic representation of the broader cultural values and philosophical orientations towards nature, as well as class and labor relations of the time. Ultimately, this reproduction serves not just as a depiction, but as an engagement with the construction of meaning.