A Torrent at Romagnes

France was defeated, broken in body and spirit, at the end of the bloody Franco-Prussian War in 1871. The comfort and beauty of landscape paintings was a balm, a boost to morale. Jules Castagnary, a critic at the time, commented, Landscape remains the strength and glory of our French school. Although the jury went through it like a plow through a green field, there are still enough beautiful examples to prove to foreigners that we have not degenerated, at least not in this area. Corot became a poet of landscape painting with images like this, the women walking beside the torrential river representing the peace and wellness of the French after the war.