French artist Jean Metzinger’s 1904 Landscape in oil seems to glorify farming’s simplicity. Metzinger depicts rural life through a basic composition of a foreground, middle ground, and background, which expounds upon this simplicity. The scene itself depicts a rural farm surrounded by trees, shrubs, flowers, and hills. This piece has three ways of making the subject matter seem ideal. Metzinger uses a light color scheme, a varying painting style, and a simplified composition to glorify farming and depict it in a light and happy mood in contrast to the Industrial Revolution’s ills.

The color scheme’s light shades and soft pastels emit a feeling of total happiness. The happiness that the colors evoke makes farming appear joyous. Farming’s veneration through color occurred because of the poor working conditions and the different painting styles in use at the time. The first reason stems from the French economy around the turn of the century. France remained extremely rural with over half the population still engaged in agriculture up until the start of World War I (Mettam and Johnson 118). The economy never really developed into a strong industrialized state (Mettam and Johnson 118). However, there were a few factories in major cities like Paris, but working conditions were horrid and on many occasions, the workers and employers clashed (Mettam and Johnson 121). When these battles occurred, the government would back the employers, and on one occasion, the military killed 20,000 workers and jailed 50,000 more, thus decimating the already small working class (Mettam and Johnson 116). Thus farming, or self-employment, seemed in many eyes the perfect occupation to have.

The second reason Metzinger used color to present farming as a pleasant occupation lies in the period’s various styles. A main influence could come from the Neo-Impressionist concept of wanting to create a paradise on earth (Bock 74). This could explain why the farming scene in the 1904 Landscape seems idyllic. Another style, Fauvism, used colors to express emotions, which could explain the way the pastel colors emit a peaceful, easy feeling (Atkins 91; Pioch). These two artistic movements influenced Metzinger to use color to express his attitude toward farming.

Metzinger also illustrates a feeling of dreamlike perfection through colors. This feeling comes from the way Metzinger uses the pastel colors that he dabs on the canvas in such a way that the imagination runs wild, allowing the viewer to interpret the scene in his or her own way. Metzinger would use this effect later in his Cubist paintings to let the viewer add the details (Metzinger 16). But this use of imagination through color also lets the viewer make the farm scene perfect to his or her own liking. The color used in Metzinger’s 1908 Landscape and the pointillism, or the use of dots of pure color, create yet another surreal image (Bock 81). The colors combine in the eye of the viewer to create the total picture. Both of Metzinger’s landscapes seem surreal, because the details remain sketchy and rely on the viewer’s mind to put the splashes of color together to form a total picture.

Metzinger’s complex style compounds the surreal feeling of his 1904 Landscape. The thick strokes Metzinger uses helps make the subject look simple. Yet again, this glorifies the simple life associated with farming and agriculture. The piece’s only clear lines are apparent where Metzinger outlines the foreground, otherwise it seems dreamlike and airy. However, the outlining of the foreground comes from Fauvism, a movement that reigned from 1900 to 1910, showing Metzinger’s numerous influences from many genres (Atkins 91; Leymarie 17-26). The Fauvist style makes the scene seem unrealistic, as though the scene exists only in dreams (Atkins 150). Still the landscape seems to emanate peacefulness and tranquility, therefore the farm seems the most idyllic occupation to have as well as promoting the simple life.

Yet in the 1908 Landscape, Metzinger uses a completely different style from the 1904 Landscape, but it still has the same effect of producing a dreamy, natural world. Metzinger uses Pointillism in the 1908 Landscape to make the scene look ethereal and surreal. Both paintings show nature and humankind intertwined, with nature dominating both pieces. This possibly extends from the rocky situation in France during the Fifth Republic, with its Panama Scandal and Dreyfus Affair (Guerard 346-353). Metzinger gives the feeling that nature reigns supreme over all things and humans should venerate it because of its tranquility compared to human civilization. Neo-Impressionists, like Metzinger, used a simple style as a means of escape from the world’s ills, especially the plight of the Proletariat (Bock 75). This simple style goes along with the simple life depicted my Metzinger in both his 1904 and 1908 Landscapes.

Metzinger’s composition in his 1904 Landscape reflects the subject matter’s simplicity. The foreground has two trees, a few bushes, some grass, and pink flowers. The middle ground has a farmhouse and a haystack, which a Neo-Impressionist would find reasonable because the Proletariat's depiction never occurred (Bock 74). The background contains rolling hills, which do not amount to much more than a large mass in the background. This arrangement seems to put nature first, although farming finishes a close second. In comparison to Metzinger’s 1908 Landscape, yet again humans and nature intertwine, with nature once more dominating the scene. The foreground of this painting has two trees, a few bushes, and two relaxed girls. The girls, although nude, are a typical and neutral subject matter for Neo-Impressionists (Bock 74). The middle ground has more trees and plants. The background contains a lake with a large yellow sun. The paintings differ only in where and how Metzinger put his human elements in the composition of each landscape.

Metzinger also uses the composition to make the eye move in a certain way, which completes the painting’s tranquility. The eye follows a spiral that starts in the middle and circles outward towards the edge. The spiral effect also shows itself in the 1908 Landscape starting with the reflection on the water, then moving through the sun to the trees, then on to the girls in the foreground, and then back around through the other trees. This spiral gives a time warp effect of another period where nature remains the focal point in the1908 Landscape while farming remains central in the 1904 Landscape. Using this technique makes agriculture appear central not only to the painting but to the piece’s purpose. This perhaps stems from a rebirth in art which parallels a change in mankind, thus explaining the time warp effect and how France began to move into the modern era with Industry (Metzinger 82).

Metzinger obviously thought that farming exemplified goodness and all things natural. This shows itself in the way that both landscapes depict idyllic scenes of humans interacting with nature. This results from the social and political conditions in France during Metzinger’s lifetime. France in the first decade of the twentieth century had only been in the Fifth Republic since 1870 (Mettam and Johnson 113). In 1871 there were several insurrections in Paris by the proletariat, or working class, which the government quickly put down with military force, decimating the number of workers by tens of thousands (Mettam and Johnson 116; Guerard 327). This could explain Metzinger’s glorification of farming and nature because of the maltreatment of the workforce. In addition, the art styles centered in France show the restlessness of the people by the way that they rapidly changed methods over ten short years (Leymarie 17; Pioch). These two reasons seem to add to the prestige of nature and the adoration of farming.

Jean Metzinger’s 1904 Landscape creates a world where farming reigns as the ideal occupation to have because there seemed no real happiness during that period in France’s history. Using color, technique, and composition, Metzinger makes it clear that he wants to glorify agriculture because of the social, political, and economic ills of France at the time. He accomplishes this task with light colors, a dreamlike technique, and a simple composition. This calm, happy, and simple piece would go well in any home, especially one of someone who has a busy life. Quite possibly, because the piece has a very elaborate frame, it belonged to a city dweller who wanted to remember when life seemed sweet and simple, a time when farming reigned supreme.