Paysage de Belgique

Rodin visited Belgium between 1871 and 1877, staying in the Fort de Soignes, to the south of Brussels. During this visit, his first to a foreign country, the artist found himself inspired by the freedom and solitude he found on his long walks in the forest, engendering for the first time a conflict within him between painting and sculpture. Rodin executed roughly thirty landscapes in oil on paper during this time, a collection which, for the most part, was given intact to the Muse Rodin. Apart from one which the artist presented as a gift to Lonce Bndite, the first curator of the museum, the present work is the only Belgian landscape known to exist outside the collection of the Muse Rodin.