19th c. Le Perche Artwork

Stone houses climb a hillside road, the light going gold over their rooftops the way it does at the end of a long day. Found in Le Mans and dating to the 19th century, it is an oil painting of an old village worked in warm earthen tones, signed in the lower corner. Painters have always been drawn to the ordinary village, the huddle of houses and the empty road, finding a quiet there that grander subjects never have. Sylvie hangs it low over a desk, or leans it on a mantel, a small window onto a village at dusk.