Soutine's Figure and Landscape

Chaïm Soutine's Figure and Landscape depicts the countryside just outside Paris. The first impression it leaves is one of rough brushwork, an unsteady composition, and forms that seem to tremble on the canvas. This is Expressionism at its most characteristic — painting not what the eye sees, but what the artist feels inside.

Stand in front of it and unease, rather than calm, is what comes through first. It's a fitting entry point into Soutine's style as a whole, and the works that follow trace out, piece by piece, just where that unease came from.