Core Record

Daubigny is often classed as a Pre-Impressionist. He provided a vital link between the Barbizon artists and the young Impressionists. Like Millet, as a student at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, he competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome in historical landscape. He quickly abandoned painting landscapes that had sentimental, nostalgic or dramatic connotations, preferring instead to paint quiet river scenes.

Although his large paintings were painted in the studio after oil sketches Daubigny, like Boudin, often worked outside, directly from nature. By 1859 his reputation was firmly established. Although he achieved considerable success, critics often complained about the rough execution and lack of finish of his paintings. Something of the sketchy quality of his works can be seen here.

The poet and critic Baudelaire, reviewing the Salon of 1859, praised Daubigny's landscapes for 'a grace and a freshness which fascinate the eye at once. They immediately convey to the spectator's soul the original feeling in which they are steeped.' He did point out, however, that paintings, which to his mind were mere studies, should not be exhibited as if they were finished paintings.