Landschap met bloeiende boomgaard 1870 - 1886

Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli produced this landscape with a blossoming orchard using oil on canvas. This painting has the distinctive features of the artist's late style, its thick application of paint creating a textured surface. Monticelli spent much of his career in Marseilles, a port city in southern France, where he developed a unique style, influenced by artists like Delacroix and Diaz. Marseilles was also deeply affected by the industrial revolution, and as its urban population increased, the city became increasingly segregated by class. Monticelli's paintings rarely make direct reference to these issues, but it is worth noting that he rarely exhibited in the official Paris Salon, preferring to sell to private collectors instead. He, like many artists of his generation, was ambivalent about the rise of the modern art market and the institutional structures that shaped it. As historians, we can consult sales records, exhibition reviews, and other period documents to better understand how Monticelli's work was received by the public and his contemporaries.