Charles François Daubigny
(1817 - Paris - 1878)
"Au bord de la Seine”, 1877
Oil on panel: 40,5 x 67 cm
Signed and stamped (l.l.) ‘Daubigny’
Provenance
Christie’s, New York, 19 november 1998, lot 124;
Gebroeders Douwes Fine Art, Amsterdam/Londen;
A private Dutch collection 2019
NotesCharles Daubigny was born in Paris on Feb. 15, 1817. His father, Edmé François Daubigny, was a landscape painter, and his uncle and aunt were miniaturists. Daubigny made the customary trip to Italy (1835-1836) and did some ideal landscapes, but his eventual direction was more decisively shaped by Dutch landscape painting. In 1838 he enrolled as a student of the academic painter Paul Delaroche.
Although Daubigny enjoyed a reasonable success at the Salons, where he exhibited from 1838 on, graphic art in the form of etchings, woodcuts, lithographs, and illustrations contributed substantially to his income. Pond with Storks (ca. 1851), with its painstaking analytical detail, is a representative Barbizon school work; it also echoes Dutch art of the 17th century. Some of Daubigny's rarely seen drawings, such as River Landscape (ca. 1860), have an astonishingly light, airy, and evocative touch.
Daubigny painted in the forest of Fontainebleau near Barbizon, along the rivers of northern France, and on the coast. He assimilated many sources and worked in many different manners. The Pond of Gylieu (1853), balanced, meticulous in execution, and suffused with soft light, was a particularly popular picture. The Lock at Optevoz (1859), done in blocky masses and heavier impasto, is reminiscent of Gustave Courbet. Daubigny's Banks of the Oise and Seine which is more delicate and luminous, gives a foretaste of Alfred Sisley. In contrast, the heaviness and dark greens of Landscape near Pontoise (1866) call to mind the work of Camille Pissarro. Intimate forest pictures such as this landscape (1877), executed in softer greens with a fluttery touch, illustrate the persistence of Camille Corot's influence.
Daubigny, whose work was considered to be too much a matter of "impressions," gave help and encouragement to Claude Monet, who followed him even in the practice of using a houseboat as a floating studio.
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Category
French 19th - 20th century
landscape