French school, late 18th century."Landscape.Oil on panel.It conserves a period frame.Measurements: 14.5 x 19.5 cm; 28.5 x 33 cm (frame).In this work the author presents an image in which the presence of the characters and their attitudes bring us closer to the costumbrista painting, an example of this is the clothesline with the clothes. However, the small dimensions of the people in relation to the landscape show us the artist's clear interest in capturing nature. One of the most radical aspects of Romantic painting was the attempt to replace large canvases with historical or religious themes with landscapes. They wanted the pure landscape, almost without figures or totally devoid of them, to attain the heroic significance of history painting. They were based on the idea that human feeling and nature should be complementary, one reflected in the other. In other words, landscape should arouse emotion and convey ideas. Thus, landscape painters such as the author of the present panel sought to express their feelings through the landscape rather than imitate it. Indeed, the artist's use of light here conveys a hazy, murky, dreamlike atmosphere that invites the viewer to meditate and contemplate himself in the landscape. However, the Romantic landscape is made up of very different types of manifestations that are not comparable; it does not affect all national schools equally, and remains more faithful to tradition in schools such as the French and Dutch. Thus, in this canvas we do not find the grandiose scenery of the British and Germans, the rugged mountains or the monumental Gothic ruins. On the contrary, it is a flat, very horizontal landscape, endowed with a gentle dynamism determined by the winding course of the river and the movement of the sky and the mountainous background. The most typical elements of the Romantic landscape, such as the hostile climate or the Gothic ruin, do not appear, although there is a clear separation between the foreground and background, which enhances the scenographic character derived from the dramatic lighting. The typical Romantic perspective is also very marked. Thus, the bombastic perspectives of the 18th-century veduta are applied here to a sober, stripped-down landscape, which tones down the scenographic construction of the landscape, so typically Romantic. Despite these local differences, despite this romanticism contained in the form, we nevertheless find a clearly poetic content, which goes beyond the simple representation of nature to depict nature as a reflection of the author's feelings, melancholic and dark, enormously solitary.