A River Landscape with Storks

Charles-François Daubigny

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

This tranquil riverscape captures the hushed stillness of dusk, as dense clusters of trees crowd the water's edge and a lone bird skims low over the glassy surface near a moored rowboat. Daubigny, a pioneering figure of the Barbizon school and a direct influence on the Impressionists, favored exactly these intimate, atmospheric views of the French countryside, painted with loose, suggestive brushwork rather than precise detail. The muted palette of deep greens and soft, glowing sky evokes the quiet poetry of rural waterways he knew intimately from sketching aboard his own studio-boat, the Botin. A serene, moody addition to any room, it rewards slow, contemplative viewing.