Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"The painted and graphic work of Charles-François Daubigny occupies a transitional period between 17th-century Dutch landscape and French Impressionism. Daubigny’s father and uncle educated young Charles to paint traditionally. But upon settling in Barbizon, a French village near Fontainebleau, his style evolved. Daubigny and other artists there – the Barbizon School – initiated a movement toward Realism in painting, reacting against the dramatic/mythological Academic painting of their time.
Barbizon School painters, the first generation of French painters to focus solely on landscape, made nature itself subject-matter instead of a backdrop for epic drama. They looked not to the heroic and grandiose conventions of Lorrain or Poussin, but to realistic Dutch landscape by Rembrandt and Jacob van Ruisdael and the poetic works of John Constable. With a focus on humble, anti-urban themes, their works have a lyrical, serene, pastoral/rural mood.
Daubigny directly influenced the upcoming generation of artists, the Impressionists. Along the Seine and Oise rivers Daubigny painted en plein air (“in the open air”) using rapid, fluid brushwork, capturing fleeting atmospheric conditions and natural light (mid-1850s). This innovation significantly impacted his friend Claude Monet. Later (1871) Daubigny introduced Pissarro and Monet to Paul Durand-Ruel – a French art dealer who went on to promote the Impressionists in Europe and New York.
Between 1838 and his death Daubigny created more than 150 graphic works, far more than fellow Barbizon artists Millet and Corot. His work contributed to the revival of etching, not widely practiced since the days of Rembrandt. Purdue’s “Shepherd and Shepherdess,” one of Daubigny’s famous late-period etchings, shows his skill in capturing light and atmosphere. Focusing on landscape, Daubigny minimizes the “staffage” or small animal/human figures tucked poetically into the scene. Daubigny produced many of the greatest landscapes of the age, and among the Barbizon, only Corot rivals him.
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