Théodore Caruelle d’Aligny painted landscapes in the neoclassical tradition of Nicolas Poussin. In this highly finished drawing, he uses different tones of charcoal to imitate the sumptuous effects of oil painting. Charcoal, primarily a medium for sketches and underdrawings on canvas, was rarely used in this manner. But d’Aligny excelled in it, depicting nature as an organization of solid masses and forms, independent of weather conditions. Exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1855, this drawing is still in its original frame. Its high level of refinement and finish suggests that d’Aligny created it specifically for public display. “[His] incontestable grand style,” the critic Théophile Gautier noted in a review the following year, “[possesses] a severity of line, a sobriety of detail and a firmness of execution that is perhaps too absolute, giving one the idea of nature as marble reproduced in bas-relief; he is a sculptor more than a painter.”