A comparison with earlier works such as Le Chemin, Paysage à Meudon (1911), Les Baigneuses (Gleizes) (1912), Harvest Threshing (1912) and Passy, Bridges of Paris (1912) demonstrates the artists' continuity with the theme of deep spatial vistas and wide panoramic views, though with a notable diminution of specific references to reality.

[1] The painting was reproduced in the German art and literary magazine Der Sturm (titled Baum und Fluss) October 1920.

In the absence of his individual reflexes, these unique references—no matter how neutral—seem less and less in accord with the generalized nature of his austere, flat painting style.

[1][4]With regard to structural composition, Cubist Landscape and other works closely related, are of critical importance, as their rhythms anticipate Gleizes' vital principles of translation and rotation (tilting planes and circular movements).

This was, according to art historian Pierre Alibert [fr], the foundation of both a new species of painting and an alternative relationship with the world; hence another principle of civilization.