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Many critics have noted the extremely visual quality of Thomas Hardy’s descriptions, and the wealth of references to “genre” and landscape paintings of the Dutch and Flemish Schools in his early novels. But most of those studies—with the notable exception of J.B. Bullen’s very perceptive book on Hardy’s “expressive eye”—have related this “pictorial” strategy to the novelist’s attempts to render the life of ordinary rural folk, and more generally, pictures of “low life.” This study proposes to show, on the contrary, that references to the painter’s art in Far from the Madding Crowd work as indirect allusions to visual or “iconological” structures, rather than explicit references to individual works. Those allusions unite to create a rich metaphorical undercurrent, which goes against any type of realistic or naturalistic ambition. This figurative strategy may help us re-assess Hardy’s poetics, in terms of subjective perception and intensity of vision—that is, as illustrative of the poet’s craft, already to be felt under the surface of his very first novels.