Charles‐François Daubigny 1817–1878
NG 2622 
River Scene with Ducks

Sarah Herring, 2019

Extracted from:
Sarah Herring, The Nineteenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2019).

1859

Oil on wood (probably oak), 20.4 × 40 cm

Signed bottom right (within the field of the main panel) in brown: Daubigny. 1859

Support

The principal wood support consists of a panel with a horizontal grain. There are narrow additions at the top and bottom (1.1 cm high at each end), most probably added by the artist himself. The paint on the top and bottom sections overlaps that on the central panel by about 2–3 mm. There are traces of gilding above the join between the main panel and the lower addition, suggesting that at some point the painting was in a smaller frame. A broken circle is incised into the back of the panel, the collector’s mark of a former owner, Alexander Young.¹ Also on the back are inscribed ‘140’ (or 8) ‘98’ in pencil, and in chalk, probably by a member of National Gallery staff, ‘C4/MANS’.

Materials and Technique

There appears to be a very thin off‐white preparation layer across the main panel, through which the colour of the wooden support remains visible in many areas. Analysis carried out on this layer from the main panel confirmed that it consists of a single layer composed of lead white with yellow earths, a little bone black, possibly with some chalk added. It has not been possible to confirm the presence and composition of a ground layer on the upper and lower additions. Visible under the paint layers and in the X‐radiograph there is an earlier image of a large boat, painted on the panel in its narrower format, before the additions (fig. 1). It is probable that the additions were attached prior to the commencement of the present landscape, which was painted over the boat.

The paint along the upper addition differs greatly, both in surface appearance and choice of pigments, from the main panel (fig. 2). Notably, on the main panel the blue pigment used to tint the lead white matrix is cobalt blue, whereas French ultramarine is employed on the upper extension.² Moreover, the sky on the main panel contains yellow ochre, ivory black and traces of emerald green and viridian, in contrast to the creamy yellow sky paint on the upper extension, which contains a pale Naples yellow in addition to yellow and orange earth. This difference in colour and paint composition might normally suggest that the top extension to the panel was added after the main painting had been completed. However, examined under the microscope, the [page 281] [page 282] blue sky paint of the main panel appears to continue beneath the apparently mismatched creamy yellow paint on the upper addition. It is therefore likely that the creamy sky paint was added at a later date. Whether this was carried out by another hand or by the artist himself is unclear. Despite the inconsistency in pigment mixtures between the initial blue sky paint and the upper creamy sky paint, all the pigments used have been identified on paintings by Daubigny, thus we cannot rule out that these represent later artist’s reworkings. The motivation for this retouching/reworking has also not been fully explained but it may relate to the number of small losses and abrasion evident in the underlying layers. By contrast, the paint between the main panel and the lower extension appears entirely continuous, with no reworkings.

Analysis of Daubigny’s green paint mixtures, used for the long grass and foliage in this painting, demonstrate the artist’s penchant for a variety of modern nineteenth‐century pigments including chrome green (a pigment created by the precipitation of Prussian blue on chrome yellow), cadmium yellow, emerald green, and viridian.³

Medium analysis identified heat‐bodied walnut oil as the paint binder in a sample from the sky on the main panel. Some pine resin was also present, possibly added to the paint rather than from surface contamination. A sample from the top addition was also bound in heat‐bodied walnut oil.

The paint layers have been carefully built up, with no evidence of wet‐in‐wet working, suggesting that the scene was painted over a period of time. The paint layers are comparatively thin, so that the colour of the wooden support shows through in many places, exerting an important influence on the final colours. The brushwork used for the river is very fine and feathery, for example the delicate vertical strokes denoting the reeds surrounding the boat and growing elsewhere (fig. 3). The water is painted in smooth horizontal strokes interspersed with vertical strokes indicating disturbances and reflections. Larger touches of paint indicate water lilies. On the left, near the group of ducks, touches of paint varying in colour from brown to green and white form horizontal lines that appear to float on the water surface. In one example it is possible to trace the gradual change of paint on the brush as the artist moves from one colour to another, picking up and mixing different paint without changing or cleaning the brush, so that the shift in colour is gradual and subtle. This handling of colour and paint can be said to anticipate that of Monet, particularly in his water lily works. By contrast, the trees in the background are more broadly painted, and the sky, in relation to the rest, has been painted quite roughly: the swirling grey clouds are painted in circular strokes in different greys. The sky paint has been brought down and over the tops of the trees.

Conservation and Condition

NG 2622 was cleaned and restored in 1992. It is generally in a good condition. The signature is very thin.

Discussion

On the far shore of this densely wooded river landscape are a couple of women, presumably washerwomen. To the right a clump of trees enclosed by a fence and a gate suggest private land; perhaps this is the fence enclosing a garden that slopes down to the river. A group of ducks emerges from a clump of bulrushes at the extreme left. Some vegetation grows in the water, including what may be water lilies alongside the boat. The river is the Oise, near Auvers. Daubigny first visited [page 283] Auvers‐sur‐Oise, where he was eventually to settle, in 1850. In 1860 he bought a plot of land at what is now called 61 rue Daubigny, where he built a home (designed by his friend the architect/painter Achille‐François Oudinot (1820–1891)) and studio. In 1875 he bought a further house opposite the station, which, despite the fact that he never lived there, kept the name ‘Jardin de Daubigny’.

On the right, mostly hidden by a clump of trees, can be glimpsed what must be Daubigny’s floating studio, Le Botin. The cabin is painted in grey and the boat itself in two bands, red above black. The wife of Daubigny’s son, Mme Karl Daubigny, wrote of its origin: ‘It was a Monsieur Baillet of Asnières who sold Daubigny a boat originally destined to serve as a ferry … in the form of an open pilot‐boat, flat‐bottomed, made of oak and with a draught of only half a metre’. M. Baillet turned the boat into a sailing boat with oars and added a pine cabin 1.75 m high and 2.2 m wide. Daubigny turned the cabin into a studio and living quarters, and painted it in wide stripes of different colours. His daughter‐in‐law also relates how the boat got its name, which means ‘Little Box’. During an argument between the crew and that of a barge, the latter yelled ‘He’ll [the cabin boy] drive us nuts with his Botin’.⁴

It is said that Le Botin’s first outing, at which Corot was present, was in November 1857, but in fact (as evidenced by a letter of 28 October 1857 to Geffroy‐Dechaume) the boat had already been in service for some time.⁵ Its last journey was on the Oise in the summer of 1867; after it started taking on water it was put into permanent dry dock in the garden at Auvers, and was replaced by a second vessel.⁶ Daubigny made a series of 47 drawings illustrating life on board.⁷ In many of these the boat is shown with a simple, striped, box‐like cabin at one end. By contrast, his drawing Le Botin, seen from the Side (fig. 4) offers a more elaborate set‐up, with the cabin at one end, a pitched roof area in the middle and an awning stretched to the other end. As a photograph of the boat also shows the simpler structure, it is reasonable to suppose that the additional roof and awning could be removed.⁸ Further, there are models both of Le Botin and its successor, complete with sails, made by a descendant, Daniel Raskin‐Daubigny (1926–2008), on display in the Maison‐Atelier de Daubigny in Auvers‐sur‐Oise; that of Le Botin is black and red, the simple box‐like cabin painted in stripes of red, yellow, green, blue and red (fig. 5).⁹ Daubigny did not appear to include these colours in any of his own depictions of his boat, and what is visible of the boat in NG 2622 is identical to that depicted in a picture by Corot painted in June 1860: Daubigny working on his ‘Botin’ near Auvers‐sur‐Oise (fig. 6). This also shows the boat with a simple box‐like structure, grey striped with black, at one end; the boat itself is black with a horizontal red stripe. It also seems likely that the boat originally [page 284] depicted on the panel is also his boat seen from the side. The structure of the cabin with horizontal stripes can be made out on the left.¹⁰

Daubigny’s example inspired Monet to acquire a studio boat in 1872, which he fitted with a cabin similar to Daubigny’s. It appeared in some of his paintings, such as The Floating Studio (1874; Otterlo, Rijksmuseum Kröller‐Müller), and Manet painted him at work in it in the same year in Monet working in his Floating Studio at Argenteuil (1874; Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen).

Provenance

NG 2622 was in the collection of Alexander Young (1828–1907); acquired with the Young Collection by Agnew’s in 1906; sold by Agnew’s to George Salting (1835–1909), 1906;¹¹ Salting Bequest, 1910.

Exhibitions

London 1910a (11, Landscape); London 1966 (not numbered); Barnard Castle 2002–3 (not numbered); London 2009 (25 in accompanying book); London 2013 (not numbered); Cincinnati, Edinburgh and Amsterdam 2016–17 (fig. 62 in accompanying checklist). On loan to Manchester City Art Gallery from February 1918 to October 1919 ; Castle Museum, Norwich from December 1953 to February 1963 ; Hatton Gallery, Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne from August 1966 to October 1970 ; Bradford City Art Gallery from August 1978 to May 1987 .

Literature

Halton 1906, II, p. 108; Holmes 1910, p. 86; Davies and Gould 1970, pp. 42–3; Hellebranth 1976, no. 257 (Bords de l’Oise près d’Auvers); Roy 1999, p. 339; Herring 2016.

Notes