A French landscapist of the Barbizon School, Charles-Francois Daubigny was born in 1817 in Paris. In 1835, having received a small scholarship, he went to Italy, where he spent an unproductive year. He earned a living by doing engravings for books and regularly sent to the Salon peaceful landscapes, painted in a highly detailed style, with great respect for nature.

In the 1840s, Daubigny worked for travel books and magazines, doing graphics of a candidness that showed his immediate vision of nature, increasingly dependent on fleeting optical visions. As a successor to Corot, Dupre and Rousseau, he attracted the attention of critics. Gradually, he began to sacrifice detail, painting with broad strokes and cover...