Charles-François Daubigny, 'Landscape with Cattle by a Stream', 1872

On the left a rocky hillside leads down to grassy pasture and a river which runs from the right corner into the background. Cart tracks run through the pasture from the front edge. Cows graze, watched by a dog, and a lone washerwoman kneels on the right bank of the river, her white linen visible in the water. The river is the Cure, a tributary of the Yonne in the Morvan region of Burgundy. It was an area that Daubigny frequently visited from the 1830s onwards. In 1863 he explored the waterways in his studio boat, Le Botin (for which see River Scene with Ducks), and at the Salon of 1864 he exhibited The Banks of the Cure, Morvan, Autumn Effect (Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna), which has a composition closely related to this view.

Later in his life, as the river landscape around Paris began to dominate his work, Daubigny’s visits to Burgundy became less frequent, with the final one taking place in 1874. This work, which is dated 1872, was probably painted in the studio as a souvenir of the area. It is a pastoral scene imbued with a sense of stillness and peace. The sunset sky, reflected in the river, adds to the sense of solitude which pervades the landscape. Yet on close examination the work is painted boldly, with the brushwork clearly visible in many areas, particularly the sky. Daubigny brought the sky paint round and over the trees and bushes, squeezing in strokes of pink and orange between the three tall trees at the right. He also used an unusual tool, possibly a comb for creating decorative wood graining effects, to create textural effects in the sky. These effects can also be seen in the sky of Alders and in the path of The Garden Wall, Auvers-sur-Oise, where they are more widely spaced.