Fishermen's boats, Normandy coast.
Oil on canvas, signed lower right.
32 x 41 cm.
Restorations, old lining.
If one had to remember only one official painter of the French Navy, it would perhaps be Théodore Gudin. Not only because he was the first to be appointed to this post, in 1830, but also because of the immense popularity he enjoyed from the beginning, after having trained with Anne-Louis Girodet and Antoine-Jean Gros.
The British art historian John Steegman notes that "his fame in the Paris of Louis-Philippe and Louis-Napoleon, in the St. Petersburg of Nicholas I, the Berlin of Frederick William IV, and the London of the Prince Consort was extremely high, and connoisseurs placed him on a par with Vernet" (The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs , Sep., 1942, Vol. 81, No. 474 (Sep., 1942), pp. 230+232-233).
Our work, far from the representations of tormented naval battles that the high spheres of power ordered in quantity, testifies to a beautiful poetic sensitivity and a pronounced taste for the effects of light. Evoking Turner's seascapes and announcing those of Boudin, this peaceful embarkation scene is to be compared to the one preserved in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen (M.212) or to "Plage à marée basse" (1851) in the Musée Magnin in Dijon.
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