Seeking a more racially tolerant environment in which to develop his creative talents, African American painter Hale Woodruff moved to France in 1927. There, he attended art classes, visited museums, and engaged in the vibrant expatriate community of avant-garde painters. Woodruff’s compositional rhythm and tactile use of color in Old Farmhouse in Beauce Valley bring a monumentality to the humble subject that recalls the landscapes of the French modernists Cézanne, Braque, and Picasso—influential models for many American artists of the time.