NARRATOR:
Charles-François Daubigny was one of the first artists to focus on capturing the momentary effects of light on a landscape. Though he was of an earlier generation than the Impressionists, you can see in this luminous sky that he foreshadowed their interest in light and atmosphere. Like the Impressionists, Daubigny enjoyed working outside. He painted what he saw on the spot, rather than taking sketches back home to create a finished work in his studio. For river scenes like these, he worked from a boat that he had converted to a floating studio. Claude Monet would later do the same. Daubigny named his good friend, the artist Camille Corot, honorary captain. Being in a boat and away from the shore gave Daubigny a different perspective on the landscape he was painting.
Here, the features of the land and the little white ducks in the center of the meadow are suggested with just a few quick strokes of paint. Critics appreciated Daubigny’s sense of nature, but disapproved of his execution:
CRITIC (ACTOR):
“I do not know anyone who has a more intimate feeling for nature, and who can better make it felt. But why does he only produce rough sketches. Is Monsieur Daubigny afraid of ruining his work by finishing it?”
NARRATOR:
Undeterred by such criticism, Daubigny remained a great champion of younger artists, including Cézanne, Pissarro, Monet and Renoir, all of whom endured equally negative reviews. Daubigny was invited to serve on the jury for the Salon, the most important government-sponsored exhibition in Europe. But he resigned when works by Pissarro and Cézanne were rejected, saying:
DAUBIGNY (ACTOR):
“[I] prefer paintings full of daring to the nonentities welcomed into each Salon.”
Village on the Seine near Vernon
1872
Charles-François Daubigny (French, 1817-1878)
Not on View
From the conservative art establishment, to the Barbizon painters, to the young Impressionists whose work he championed in the 1860s, everyone loved Daubigny. His success was early and enduring. This fresh, expansive landscape gives us some idea why. Abbreviated brushwork and careful attention to the sky might suggest that the picture was painted in the open air, perhaps even aboard Daubigny’s studio boat (an innovation famously imitated by Monet), but for a landscape of such scale and ambition, Daubigny would surely have completed most of the work indoors at his Paris studio.
Details
- Artist Name: Charles-François Daubigny (French, 1817-1878)
- Title: Village on the Seine near Vernon
- Date: 1872
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 33-5/8 x 57-5/8 in. (85.4 x 146.4 cm.)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1966.02.4.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
[M. Knoedler and Co., New York, sold 1899 to];
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.;
[E.V. Thaw and Co., New York; sold 1966 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.;
[E.V. Thaw and Co., New York; sold 1966 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
[on loan]
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1966-05 to
[on loan]
- Hunt Branch Library, Fullerton, 1966-09-20 to
[on loan]
- Santa Fe, Museum of New Mexico, 1959-07-01 to 1959-08-13
[on loan]
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1969-07-16 to 1974-11-26
A Selection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Works from the Hunt Foods and Industries Museum of Art Collection
- Irvine, University of California, 1967-03-07 to 1967-03-22
- University of California, Davis, 1967-04-03 to 1967-04-28
- University of California, Riverside, 1967-05-10 to 1967-05-30
- San Diego, San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, 1967-07-07 to 1967-10-01
[on loan]
- Fullerton Library, 1967-10-20 to 1969-04-27
Images of the Landscape, Barbizon and Impressionist Paintings from the Permanent Collection
- Norton Simon Museum, 1987-07-02 to 1989-10-29
Three Centuries of French Art: Selections from The Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art and the Norton Simon Foundation_2
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1974-10-19 to 1976-06-15
Selections from the Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art
- Princeton University Art Museum, 1972-12-03 to 1974-07-17
Reinstallation of South Wing
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-10-07 to 1995-08-13
- Steadman, David W., University: A Princeton Quarterly, p. 9
- Bryant, L. M., What Pictures to see in America, 1915, fig. 112 pp. 188-189
- Steadman, David W., Selections from the Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art, 1972, no. 20 p. 75
- Hellebranth, Robert, Charles-François Daubigny, 1817-1878, 1976, no. 87 p. 34
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 119
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 304 p. 282
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