Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional Search Ir al contenido principal

Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
Visit Collection Exhibitions Activities Education Search
  • Visit
  • Collection
  • Exhibitions
  • Activities
  • Education

Thyssen - Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
©
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Nicolas Lancret

The Earth

Oil on canvas.
38 x 31 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
216
(
1977.33
)
ROOM 24
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
This canvas forms part of a series on the Four Elements, a theme that was popular during the 17th century and which frequently took the form of depictions of figures engaged in tasks appropriate to each element. The present series was commissioned from Lancret by the Marquis of Béringhen to decorate a room in his Paris hotel on the rue Saint-Nicaise. An inventory drawn up on the Marquis’ death notes that the series was hung in a room that looked onto the garden. The Marquis was a patron of the arts whose collection included compositions by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, François Boucher and Jean François de Troy. The series to which the present canvas belonged was reproduced in engravings by four artists: Nicolas Tardiu, who depicted Air; Louis Desplaces, Water, Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Earth; and Benoit Audran, Fire. The complete series of prints was put on sale by the Veuve Chéreau in August 1732, and was advertised in the Mercure de France which also supplied the additional information that the prints were based on original paintings by Lancret that were in the collection of Marquis of Béringhen and supplied the names of the four printmakers. The account in the Mercure, which describes the paintings in a general manner, has proved a valuable reference point for dating the series.

After the Marquis’ death, the set of the Four Elements was auctioned in 1770 and entered the collection of the Marquis of Lassay, who sold the group in 1775. In 1884 Earth and Water were to be found in Halton Manor, the English residence of Alfred de Rothschild. From there Earth passed into the collection of the Countess of Carnarvon who owned it until 1977, at which date it entered the present Collection.

Lancret constructs the framework of his scene through the presence of a large tree on the left and part of a monumental fountain on the right. His orchard-garden is the setting for country workers on the left and a group of ladies and gentleman on the right who amuse themselves passing a day collecting the fruits of the earth, with the exception of the young man who is busy courting one of the ladies and is depicted offering her a bouquet of flowers. The rest of the group — three women on the ground and another standing next to the ladder — are engaged in selecting fruit. Lancret uses a soft chromatic range with subtle, attractive juxtapositions such as the yellow and blue of the dress of the standing woman and the shot colours of the skirts and bodices of the woman in the foreground and the one about to receive the bouquet of flowers. This approach to colour is also evident in the three principal elements of the background, namely the sky, the dense foliage of the tree and the fountain. The figures’ gestures are equally delicate although they lack that sense of fragility and vulnerability to be found in Watteau’s characters.

Of the other three canvases that made up this set, only the whereabouts of Fire is known, now in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in the Palazzo Barberini, Rome. The Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor (UK) has a drawing by Lancret for a figure of a standing woman holding up her skirts. A second drawing of the seated man with the bouquet of flowers is in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris.

Mar Borobia
18th Century - French paintingPaintingOilcanvas
Listen
Download image Print page

Products and publications

"Masterworks from Budapest" exhibition catalogue (Spanish, Paperback)

"Masterworks from Budapest" exhibition catalogue (Spanish, Paperback)

34.00 € 15.50 €

La máquina Magritte: Exhibition catalog (Spanish w. English texts)

La máquina Magritte: Exhibition catalog (Spanish w. English texts)

29.99 € 20.00 €

Catalog Walid Raad: Cotton Under My Feet (English)

Catalog Walid Raad: Cotton Under My Feet (English)

25.00 € 23.75 €

Kandinsky socks

Kandinsky socks

13.50 €

Visit online shop

More from the collection

Nicolas Lancret
Nicolas Lancret
The Swing
ca. 1735 - 1740
Hubert Robert
Hubert Robert
Interior of the Temple of Diana at Nimes
Jean Antoine Watteau
Jean Antoine Watteau
The Rest
ca. 1709
Jean Antoine Watteau
Jean Antoine Watteau
Pierrot Content
ca. 1712
  • Private and/or didactic use
  • Commercial use
Private and/or didactic use
The Earth. La tierra, antes de 1732
The Earth
Nicolas Lancret

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Terms of Use

The exploitation rights of the images correspond to the Fundación Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, F.S.P. The Fundación authorizes the downloading of high-resolution images from its website for private use, use for educational and research purposes, and other non-commercial uses.

Use for educational and research purposes is understood as the non-commercial or advertising use of images in presentations, conferences, school or university work, in classes at regulated education institutions, as well as in academic publications, with a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, provided that it is non-profit.

Non-commercial use is understood as the use of the images in a context where no profit, monetary or commercial, is generated, directly or indirectly.

Any use other than those indicated above will require the prior written authorization of the Fundación Any request for educational and research use or for non-commercial use (including academic publications), should be directed by email to the Museum Photo Library through the email address archivo.fotografico@museothyssen.org. This department manages the worldwide distribution of the images of the works of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza and the management of their reproduction rights for those uses.

The user agrees to use the image of the website solely and exclusively for the purposes described above and in accordance with the following terms of use:

Terms of use

  • If the image is used for reproduction, the work must be reproduced in its entirety. The image may not be manipulated, deformed, modified, or altered in any way. In particular, no superposition (of images or texts) on the reproduction is allowed.
  • The reproduction of a detail or part of the work may only be made with the prior written authorization of the Fundación. In this case, the credit line must include the following mention: “detail”.
  • Any total or partial reproduction of the images authorized by the Fundación must be accompanied by the following mention: Author's name. Title, Date © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
  • The user will send to the Museum Photo Library of the Fundación one (1) free copy of the edition, publication or reproduction to the following address: Archivo Fotográfico, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado, 8 28014 Madrid, Spain.
Download image
Commercial use
The Earth. La tierra, antes de 1732
The Earth
Nicolas Lancret

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Terms of Use

The Photographic Archive of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers sale and rental service of photographic material of all the works on its Permanent Collection.

To request images or permits for commercial use in academic or research publications, that is, catalogues of other institutions, monographs and other specialized publications, you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail @email.

To request images or permits for other commercial or advertising uses (general publications, merchandising, exhibitions, audio-visual works, web pages, etc.), you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail @email.

The Photo Library and the Museum's Commercial Archive manage the worldwide distribution of images of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza works, as well as their reproduction rights. The applicable rates are calculated based on the nature and proposed use of the images, as well as the availability of the requested image.

Requests for scans or new photographs will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Once approved, an additional fee will apply. Re-photographing a work will require a minimum of six weeks to complete.

However, photographed works are protected by copyright. Therefore, regardless of the terms of use of the photographs set out below by the Foundation, it will be necessary to obtain a license from the author or copyright holder known to the Fundacion in order to reproduce or exploit the work.

Download image
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional

Navegación secundaria (EN)

  • #Thyssenmultimedia
  • Press
  • Corporate events
  • Tourism
  • Join our team
  • Newsletter
Instagram
Facebook
X
Youtube
TikTok
iVoox
LinkedIn

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza would like to thanks for the collaboration of:

Fundación Mutua Madrileña Master Card Comunidad de Madrid
©2025 Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

Menú al pie (EN)

  • Legal terms and use of images
  • Public tenders
  • Transparency site
  • Accessibility and quality
  • Sustainability & 2030 Agenda
  • Contact
Ministry of Culture España es cultura | Spain is culture. The website promoting Spanish culture Paisaje de la Luz | Paseo del Prado y Buen Retiro. Paisaje de las Artes y las Ciencias
Certificación de Conformidad con el Esquema Nacional de Seguridad. Categoría Media. RD 311/2022