Inscribed and dated 'Clémentine 1821', this oil by Jean-Victor Bertin (1767–1842) depicts figures fording a river in a classical landscape.

This hitherto unpublished landscape by Bertin depicts a classical fantasy, or capriccio. Within a carefully constructed composition, two men in classical dress appear, one on a horse, the other leading the reluctant animal towards the river; to the left, a shepherd reclines in the shade with his flock nearby.

Despite the dominance of the rococo style in the first half of the eighteenth century, the old cult of antiquity and classicism was revived from 1748 onwards with the rediscovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii. By 1800 the painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819) was the dominant force championing neoclassical landscape, and in 1816 succeeded in establishing a Prix de Rome honouring 'historical landscape' painting. Of his many pupils, Jean-Victor Bertin is certainly one of the most accomplished. Born in Paris in 1767, he entered the Académie Royale de Peinture as a pupil of the history painter Gabriel-François Doyen before becoming a pupil of Valenciennes by 1788, who directed him towards idealised Italianate landscape.

Collectors of French Neoclassical landscape and the Valenciennes school will find this an unpublished and finely preserved example of Bertin's idealised capriccio manner.