Notes on Daubigny's Early Chronology

* I am grateful to the following persons for permission to examine the archives of their respective institutions: Mme. W. Bouleau-Rabaud, Conservateur de la Bibliothèque de l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, M. R. Cassanas, Secrétaire-Général de l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, M. J. Bourcier, Secrétaire de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts and Mme. Y. Coutan of the Archives du Louvre.

Abstract

Robert L. Herbert's critical study of 1962, Barbizon Revisited, encouraged a sweeping reassessment of the generally neglected painters identified with the Barbizon School.¹ Of these, none has been so consistently ignored as Daubigny—a surprising fact in view of his profound influence on later developments in landscape painting.² Herbert pointed to the gap in our knowledge of Daubigny's early period, and in 1964 Jerrold Lanes expressed hope for the discovery of new documents that would clarify Daubigny's troublesome chronology.³ My investigations of French academic art have turned up four documents which may contribute to such a clarification by shedding light on Daubigny's early career. This new information modifies considerably the standard accounts and helps to explain the strong Italianate strain in his initial phase. In the late forties and early fifties Daubigny switched from an Italian to a Dutch mode, from grand and impressive scenes to the depiction of humbler aspects of the countryside.⁴ However, until the end of his career, he retained the classicizing features of historic landscape painting, which most critics ascribed to his early experience. Yet these critics rarely account for Daubigny's conservative tendency, other than in passing reference to his trip to Italy in 1836.