The small-scale canvas The Mud Hole demonstrates an all-consuming examination of rural terrain. It was likely drawn from the environs of her the artist's home, the Château de By, located near Barbizon—known for its famous school of landscape painters. With just a sliver of sky showing at the top of the composition, the view of barren, unworked earth is seen from a bird’s-eye perspective. The only signs of life appear in the sparse clumps of grass in the foreground and the few trees that dot the horizon line. While the viewer’s focus is drawn overwhelmingly downward to the muddy earth, the water at the center of the composition reflects the overcast blue sky, mirroring the celestial in this small terrestrial body. The French critic Theodore Bentzon (the pen name of Marie-Thérèse Blanc) commented specifically on the enigmatic power of such small studies, remarking: “Notwithstanding the beauty of Bonheur’s finished paintings, what we should most covet in her very complete work would, perhaps, be her original sketches. She has never consented to give up a single one of these, in spite of the most tempting offers, keeping them as material for further work.”

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