Landscape 1840

Here we have Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps's watercolor, "Landscape", at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The composition arranges a foreground of earthy tones in an almost geological layering, leading the eye toward a distant horizon. Note how Decamps uses horizontal strata to construct a sense of depth. The subtle gradations of brown and ochre, punctuated by strokes of green, form an undulating terrain that merges into the softer, muted blues of the background hills. The trees act as vertical anchors. Decamps's landscape departs from traditional landscape painting by emphasizing the earth's raw form. We can understand this through the lens of structuralism, where the underlying structure—in this case, the geological layers—shapes the visual narrative. Decamps isn't simply representing a landscape; he's revealing its very architecture. The painting invites us to consider how meaning is constructed through visual codes, challenging any fixed representation.