Paintings

Charles-Francois Daubigny

Charles-Francois Daubigny influenced the impressionist movement.  His father Edme, a painter himself, encouraged him.  At 19 he went to Italy and visited Rome, Florence and Naples.  When he returned to Paris, Granet then conservator at the Louvre asked him to restore paintings at the Louvre where he admired the works of Rembrandt, Ruisdail and the Dutch painters.  After a brief stay at the academic workshop of Paul Delaroche in 1840 he began in 1843 to paint outside in Barbizon, then in the Morvan region where he met Corot and they painted together in Isere along the coast of La Manche but especially the banks of La Seine and l’Oise on a boat called Le Bottin.  (Monet later would do the same)

Daubigny little by little began using lighter colors; he truly expressed his emotion towards nature in his paintings.  From 1844 he started to be famous for his paintings of rivers and lakes.  By 1857 he became Chevalier de la legion d’honneur.  In 1868 he exhibited at the Salon in Paris where he introduced his friends Renoir, Pissaro, Monet and Bazille for this he was criticized by M. de Nieuwerkerke.  He then went to England during the war in 1870; he introduced Pisarro and Monet to the art dealer Durand Ruel.  Daubigny then went with Monet to Holland and back to France, he painted in Auvers in the countryside and along l’Oise on his boat, he also painted in Le Dauphine, along the North Sea in Pontoise.  Auvers his favorite place to paint is where he met Cezanne.

His painting “La Niege dans la campagne d’Auvers” inspired Van Gogh to paint his “Change de ble aux corbeaux” and in his letters Van Gogh always praised Daubigny’s works.

Reference:

Dictionnaire des Petits Maitres de la Peinture 1820-1920, by Gerald Schurr & Pierre Cabanne, pg. 324, Tome I, A a H.