A Taste for Nature The memory of his youthful friendships, mingled with a deep love of nature and a constant search for reality and the objective translation of the perceived object, may be at the root of this little-known sector of the artist's work. In it he shows himself to be mindful of the subtlety of atmospheric variations, like his modernist contemporaries. His attention was attracted by seascapes, beach scenes, snow scenes, forests, storms, sunsets, and sites such as Ambleteuse, Fontainebleau, Trouville, the Oise, the Savoie and Saint-Aygulf. In 1868 he exhibited at Le Havre, together with Monet, Courbet and Manet, at the International Marine Exhibition (Exposition maritime internationale) where he was awarded a silver medal. There are two works from this same period arising from the observation of a single site at two moments in the day, a process which was used by Monet to study the ever-changing nature of light. Carolus-Duran's paintings are of a view looking from Audresselles towards Ambleteuse. Numerous stays in Normandy, in Savoie for thermal cures, in the Parisian region near Fontainbleau or in the South of France resulted in the production of lovely studies, sometimes sensitive, airy and luminous, sometimes darker, where Carolus could freely translate his feeling for nature, a demanding mistress to whom he never ceased to refer. The canvases painted at Trouville, dating from 1872 and 1875, contemporaneous with the first Impressionist exhibitions, revealed the virtuosity of the artist, but here in the service of a theme dear to his modern contemporaries, particularly Boudin and Monet. Woman in a Country Storm reveals another aspect of the painter's sensitivity, remarkably energetic and eloquent. The atmosphere, elsewhere peaceful and happy, is here tormented, almost brutal. Carolus-Duran allows his deeply expressive, astonishingly modern nature to feature in this work. Nevertheless, landscapes remain in the minority in Carolus's work, and this aspect of his painting was to find itself progressively stifled by the success of his society portraits.