House of MeRe Bazot by Charles Francois Daubigny
This tranquil sunset painting by Charles Francois Daubigny is a lovely Barbizon painting.
Daubigny's greatest strength are is sky's and that is well demonstrated here in the fine painting.
This painting that is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago is a fine example of Daubigny's work, however, Chicago only possess his secondary pieces which though they are good are not up to measure with this truly great master.
The scene before us is the house of Mr.
Bazot, a quite hamlet in the French countryside.
Almost two-thirds of the painting is below the horizon line.
The sun is almost down, therefore, leaving very little light on the lower portion of the painting.
However, there is much to see even with the muted light, the house nicely tucked into the landscape, the road, fence, and colorful trees to the right of the house.
Even though the house is the anchoring image in the lower section of the painting the real subject of the work is the sky.
The sky here is well done and in the best manner of Daubigny, for he like no other Barbizon master is able to bring life to the clouds that hover over the land and bring serenity to the scene.
If you look carefully you will see that the sky gets it's darkest at the top right corner of the painting, much in the same manner as that of Corot.
What sets Daubigny apart from all the others are his clouds and his ability to utilize them to be luminiferous agents of the setting sun's light.
Look at the clouds! What Daubigny does here is sets them in front of the atmosphere and then uses the rays of the sun's light to reflect them back to the viewer with light in different tones.
You can see that the clouds on the left side of the painting are over the fading sun because they have the most light (at no point can you actually see the sun), over to the center you have another cloud but notice that it is not as bright and there are several muted tones in the cloud.
On the far right side the sky has dissipated into the atmosphere leaving no glow.
All along the horizon you can see the glow of the sun and in the middle he adds a red/pink tone to anchor you in.
The landscape right below the horizon is the darkest due to the high contrast of light of the sun.
This painting is work seeing for his use of light and there affects on the sky.
The landscape below the horizon is not his best work.
Stephen F.
Condren - Artist
Daubigny's greatest strength are is sky's and that is well demonstrated here in the fine painting.
This painting that is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago is a fine example of Daubigny's work, however, Chicago only possess his secondary pieces which though they are good are not up to measure with this truly great master.
The scene before us is the house of Mr.
Bazot, a quite hamlet in the French countryside.
Almost two-thirds of the painting is below the horizon line.
The sun is almost down, therefore, leaving very little light on the lower portion of the painting.
However, there is much to see even with the muted light, the house nicely tucked into the landscape, the road, fence, and colorful trees to the right of the house.
Even though the house is the anchoring image in the lower section of the painting the real subject of the work is the sky.
The sky here is well done and in the best manner of Daubigny, for he like no other Barbizon master is able to bring life to the clouds that hover over the land and bring serenity to the scene.
If you look carefully you will see that the sky gets it's darkest at the top right corner of the painting, much in the same manner as that of Corot.
What sets Daubigny apart from all the others are his clouds and his ability to utilize them to be luminiferous agents of the setting sun's light.
Look at the clouds! What Daubigny does here is sets them in front of the atmosphere and then uses the rays of the sun's light to reflect them back to the viewer with light in different tones.
You can see that the clouds on the left side of the painting are over the fading sun because they have the most light (at no point can you actually see the sun), over to the center you have another cloud but notice that it is not as bright and there are several muted tones in the cloud.
On the far right side the sky has dissipated into the atmosphere leaving no glow.
All along the horizon you can see the glow of the sun and in the middle he adds a red/pink tone to anchor you in.
The landscape right below the horizon is the darkest due to the high contrast of light of the sun.
This painting is work seeing for his use of light and there affects on the sky.
The landscape below the horizon is not his best work.
Stephen F.
Condren - Artist
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