Works by Charles-François Daubigny
195 works · 158 msLow river banks under wide skies: Charles-François Daubigny, a painter of the Barbizon school, fitted out a boat as a floating studio in 1857 and painted from it along the Seine and the Oise.
In Washerwomen at the Oise River near Valmondois of 1865, trees crowd the left bank, the women are specks at the water's edge, and beyond lie village roofs and still water that repeats the sky. He often stretched a scene along the horizon, lit from behind. The Rising Moon on the River Bank of 1874 is a mauve dusk: a full moon over thatched roofs, its reflection in the river, a lone man in a boat.
Taught by his father and uncle, both painters, he lived for years on illustrating books, magazines and travel guides. From 1843 he worked outdoors at Barbizon, met Camille Corot at Optevoz in 1852 and from then on felt the pull of Gustave Courbet. The boat, the Botin, often took him around Auvers, and his 1862 etchings Voyage en Bateau show life on board, with his son Karl as cabin boy.
That year he and Corot also tried cliché-verre, a process between photography and printmaking. Effet de Nuit, from a plate of 1858–1862 but printed in 1921, after his death, is a mesh of fine lines around one bright disc low over a pond. In The Oak Tree and the Reed, a wash drawing of c. 1873 illustrating La Fontaine's fable, the oak lies ripped from the ground under blue cloud and slanting rain. Below, paintings outnumber prints about three to one, and landscapes dominate, with rivers or ponds in close to half.
Sources: Wikidata, Wikipedia, Cleveland Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, National Gallery of Art, Finnish National Gallery.
