Charles-Francois Daubigny

Charles-François Daubigny , 1817-78, French landscape painter. He went to Italy early in life and later studied in Paris with Paul Delaroche. Although usually classed with the Barbizon school, he never lived in Barbizon. His last 30 years were spent largely in his houseboat on the Seine and the Oise, and he is best known for his pictures of the banks of those rivers. He was particularly successful in his atmospheric depiction of dawn, twilight, and moonlight. His later pictures are handled with great breadth. Monet and Boudin were especially attentive to his work. Daubigny is well represented in the Louvre, the Mesdag Museum (The Hague), the National Gallery (London), and the Metropolitan Museum. Characteristic are his Return of the Flock—Moonlight, Banks of the Oise, and Moonlight. His son Karl Pierre Daubigny, 1846-86, painted in his father's manner.

Daubigny, Charles-François (b Paris, 15 Feb. 1817; d Paris, 19 Feb. 1878). French landscape painter, one of the earliest exponents of plein-air painting in France. He came from a family of artists and was taught initially by his father Edmé-François (1789–1843), likewise a landscape painter; he also learnt a good deal by copying 17th-century Dutch pictures in the Louvre. Although he is considered a member of the Barbizon School, he never actually lived in the locality, and his favourite subjects were river—rather than forest—scenes (he often painted from a specially fitted boat). His work, which is notable for the sensitivity with which he depicted the effects of light on trees and water, was an important influence on early Impressionism. He was influential not only stylistically but also through the support and encouragement he gave to younger painters; as a member of the Salon jury in 1868, he helped to get the work of several of the Impressionists shown, and it was he who introduced Monet and Pissarro to the dealer Durand-Ruel, when all four of them had taken refuge in England during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1. His son Karl Daubigny (1846–86) continued the family tradition in landscape painting.