Description
At Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, the river opens into a broad perspective that the trees on either bank gently close towards the horizon. But the true subject occupies the upper two thirds of the image: a convective sky, heavy, theatrical, in which the cumulus clouds light up in places with an almost solid white while other masses remain laden with rain to come. Black and white gives these clouds the density of matter — they could be reliefs suspended in the air — and turns the water, finely rippled by the wind, into an expanse of pewter. A few navigation markers emerge in the distance, the only signs of river traffic. The composition is classical, frontal, without effect: it lets the river landscape of Burgundy exist in its ancient equilibrium, that of a river tamed for centuries yet still subject, as here, to the mood of the sky.
