Eh! Bien crois-tu que je serai embarassé pour vendre avantaguesement cette étude-là? (So, what do you think...will I have a hard time getting a good price for this study?), from the series Les Artistes

For the first half of the 19th century, artists more often copied Dutch and Flemish landscapes in the Louvre than set up their easels in open fields to paint directly from nature. One of Daumier’s good friends, the landscape painter Charles François Daubigny, often complained that passersby would stop and gawk as he tried to work in the open air. Daumier shared Daubigny’s interest in meteorological effects and the play of light and shadow but not his interest in pure landscape or working outdoors. Here he pokes good-humored fun at the landscape artist struggling to develop a following at a time when the mainstream art world still considered pure landscape to be an inferior—Baudelaire even said boring—genre. <
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> —Eh ! bien crois-tu que je serai embarassé pour vendre avantageusement cette étude-là. – Non ... seulement il faut tomber sur quelqu’un qui aime bien les peupliers. <
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> —So, what do you think... will I have a hard time getting a good price for this study? No... but you'll have to find someone who really likes poplars.