Sourced from Avignon, this 19th-century oil opens onto a vanished world, the long journeys south when a week on the road meant open country, fading light, and everything you owned loaded onto a mule. Two figures and their mule work across the rocks under a weathering sky, the whole scene gone to dusk behind its worn giltwood frame and faded red mount. Scenes like this descend from the Dutch painters who crossed into Italy in the 1600s and came home painting travelers and pack animals in a warm southern light, a manner copied so long it became a genre of its own. Sylvie leans it on a low shelf, where the traveler's red coat is the first thing to catch the eye from across the room.
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