As a Romantic artist with a penchant for landscape imagery, Dauzats produced countless panoramic views of the scenery he encountered in the Near East, in France, and in Spain—where he probably saw this gallows situated in a flat valley under a leaden, cloudy sky. At the right of the skull, a small iron cage containing a human skull is suspended on a battered square pier.

from Weisberg, Breaking the Mold: The Legacy of the Noah L. and Muriel S. Butkin Collection of Nineteenth-Century French Art (Notre Dame, 2012)