“The Virgin Islands in Bezons”
“The Virgin Islands in Bezons” (“Les Îles Vierges à Bezons”) is an oil on canvas painting by the French artist of the Barbizon school, Charles-François Daubigny, from 1855. Daubigny’s art is seen as a forerunner to Impressionism. He explored new techniques with his art and helped to pave the way to a more modern, non-traditional approach to landscapes.
In 1843, after moving to Barbizon to paint outside in nature, Daubigny’s style changed. He built an art studio on a boat and sailed along the Oise and Seine Rivers. Bezons is a suburb of Paris, located just 7 miles northwest of Paris’s city center. It sits on the banks of the Seine. The Île Saint-Martin is a larger island located within the Seine River in the Bezons community. The northern parts of the island which Daubigny depicts here, are still relatively unoccupied and left to its own nature.
This painting is one of the many pieces of art he created while sailing up and down the Oise and Seine Rivers. Etchings from 1850 of the same name are in the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, the Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, New Jersey, as well as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., all in the United States. As an etching, it is a mirror image of the view seen here.
“The Virgin Islands in Bezons” sold at a Christie’s art auction in 2002 for $53,775 USD. It is currently in a private collection. It was sold by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to raise money for their American Art acquisition fund.
For more on Charles-François Daubigny, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
