Landscape with Inlet of Water

Maker Henri-Joseph Harpignies (French, 1819 - 1916)

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Daten.d.

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensions16 1/2 x 21 3/4 in. (41.9 x 55.2 cm.)

DescriptionThis painting depicts a boatman in an inlet flanked by tall trees under cloudy skies.

SignedSigned in lower right of recto: Harpignies

InscribedSigned in lower right of recto: Harpignies

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Mike Finnell

Status

On view

Label TextAlthough a figure on a boat appears to the left of this picture, the subject is clearly the landscape whose leafy trees almost obscure the sky. Harpignies belonged to the so-called Barbizon school of painters who would gather near the rural village of Barbizon outside Paris to share ideas. In opposition to the formal clarity of other 19th-century painting that explored literary or historical subjects, the Barbizon painters were interested in the realistic depiction of nature, inspired in part by the naturalistic landscapes of the English Romantic painter John Constable (1776–1836). Rather than using landscape as a backdrop, these painters made the rural setting the protagonist of their paintings, employing the direct observation of nature to reproduce real places and moments in time.

Object number2008.17