Jean-Baptiste Lallemand

Watermark: none visible through lining.
Paintings in gouache on paper surged in popularity in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and Lallemand, a Burgundian artist who specialized in landscape scenes, found an audience for his rustic, idealized views of the French countryside.
The son of a tailor in Dijon, Lallemand was trained in his father's métier but used his leisure time to draw and paint. Rather than finding work as a tailor in Paris, he found a patron for his paintings, and by 1745 he was accepted at the Académie of St. Luke. He soon ventured to Rome, where he married and enjoyed considerable success before returning to France in 1761. His signal accomplishment was the ninety-nine views he produced for illustrations to Volume V of the “Description générale et particulière ou Voyage pittoresque de la France”, Paris, 1781. This magnum opus, commissioned by Jean Benjamin de Laborde and others, was intended to form twelve volumes, though only eight were completed.
This landscape reflects Lallemand's intimate relationship with Burgundy and the Franche-Comté. Certain elements of the composition such as the round tower, the cattle, the shepherdess on horseback, the waterfall, and the trees bending in a gentle breeze, were observed by the artist while sketching sites intended for the "Voyage pittoresque." While an imagined scene, this drawing's affinity with the landscapes of the "Voyage pittoresque" suggests a date between 1771 and 1781.