The Landscape of a French Specialist Benjamin Netter did not waste time on the trivialities of portraiture or historical allegory. He was a specialist, a man whose focus remained fixed on the terrain. Born in Strasbourg, France, he moved to Paris as a young child, a transition that placed him directly under the instruction of Léon Cogniet at the École des beaux-arts. This formal training provided the technical foundation for a career defined by a singular obsession: the natural world. He was not a painter of people, but a painter of places, specifically those where the earth rose sharply and…