Landscape With A Pond And Cottage (Sold)

Medium: Oil On Panel
Size: 31.2 x 58 cm (12.3 x 22.8 in)
Signed: Signed at lower left: Daubigny

The diminutive size of the cowherd bringing her troop of cows in from the fields to drink at a farmyard pond in Landscape with a Pond and Cottage is a strong clue that the peasant woman and her animals are simply an accent in the composition and not the motivating subject for this lushly painted landscape. Daubigny, like Troyon and Rousseau before him, was endlessly fascinated by the daunting challenge of capturing the expansiveness of the verdant French countryside on a modest canvas or panel. But where his colleagues relied upon subtle perspectival constructions to build their compositions convincingly and on massive trees to hold the spreading countryside in place, Daubigny was remarkable for his daring ability to organize his landscapes primarily through shifts in color and painterly texture.

Bold, faceted brushwork shapes the rutted cart-path in the foreground of Landscape with a Pond and Cottage, catching the viewer's eye and drawing him into the painting. But as the path approaches the cowherd, Daubigny quickly softened his paint touch to merge the muddy lane into the drier, drawn-out brush strokes that suggest alternating swathes of grassy plain and sandy soil. A bright, sunstruck streak of golden-brown at the very center of the painting seems to pull the cows along in their lumbering movement. Not only did Daubigny's skill in manipulating the size, the shape and the direction of his brushwork keep his broad pasturelands lying flat beneath his grand skies, but his eye for color and his preference for silky, fluid paints served him well in conveying the moisture and the richness -- even the smell -- of the earth of his much-loved river valleys north of Paris.

Daubigny was close in age to his principal Barbizon colleagues and he shared many of their interests in subject matter. But his assertive brushwork and his willingness to experiment with the brightest new pigments that came onto the market during the middle of the nineteenth century give paintings like Landscape with a Pond and Cottage a flashing, light-struck surface that is often closer to the work of a younger generation. Probably painted around 1865, Landscape with a Pond and Cottage belongs to the period when Daubigny often painted in the company of younger artists. His son Karl was studying with him and H.C. Delpy, J.-B. Guillemet, and even Claude Monet joined the older artist on outings in Daubigny's floating studio, "Le Botin". Influences and artistic excitement flowed in both directions between Daubigny and the artists of the Impressionist generation.

Sold to Norton Museum of Fine Art, Palm Beach