Painting Detail
River BankArtist: Charles-Francois Daubigny
Medium: Painting, Oil on panel, 26.5x46 cm
Date: 1866
Genre: Landscape Painting
Source: Anichkov Palace, Petrograd, 1918
Daubigny was perhaps one of the most important artists of the Barbizon school, which took its name from the village of Barbizon not far from Paris. This work was painted from the life during Daubigny's late period, when he was travelling in his floating studio along the rivers Oise and Seine. The composition seems like a fragment from some larger panorama. On this grey, windy day, the sky is filled with clouds. To the left on the bank is a group of tall, slender pines, and a group of ducklings swims in the river in the foreground. In his works, Daubigny sought to precisely reproduce the forms of nature, the particular relief of each locality and the atmosphere of each scene he chose to depict. The dark, intense colour scheme and dynamic manner of painting are typical of the artist's later period, and the habit of painting in the open air directly from life, with an interest in conveying effects of light and air, anticipates the work of the Impressionists.