Landscape with Rider on White Horse

1846

Landscape with Rider on White Horse, 1846. Jean Achille Benouville (French, 1815–1891). Oil on canvas; unframed: 35.5 x 53.3 cm (14 x 21 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Muriel Butkin 2010.19 The darkly shaded trees and turbulent sky introduce a romantic sentiment into this classical or ideal landscape in which a lone rider on horseback gallops through a deep space. The composition is organized into three clearly defined zones that recede from the path in the foreground, to the lake or river in the middle ground, to the distant rocky mountain and sea. In 1863, Benouville was named a Knight in the Legion of Honor, the highest French order of merit.