La lande de Bruyères (heather moorland)

The Creuse valley was covered with heather in the beginning of the 20th century, in Crozant and Gargilesse. Thus began a pictorial movement which became a huge commercial success until the 1930s. Indeed, from 1900 onward, painters such as William Didier-Pouget and Gaston Anglade strived to apply their great skills to spectacular landscapes. The encased valley's great panoramas were an ideal subject, with their pinkish heather and the mist rising above the river. These artists were landscaping pioneers and were rapidly imitated by other artists. They specialized in artificially recomposed paintings, which they worked on in their workshops as opposed to the Impressionist tecnhiques of that period in time. They became famous worldwide thanks to these extremely commercialized paintings. Back then, Didier Pouget and Gaston Anglade were much more famous than Armand Guillaumin and even Claude Monet.