DAUBIGNY, Charles-François

French landscape painter, part of a family of artists. He studied under his father Edmond-François Daubigny and in 1831-32 also trained with Jacques-Raymond Brascassat. At an early age he copied works by Ruisdael and Poussin in the Louvre, while also pursuing an apprenticeship as an engraver. At this time he drew and painted mainly at Saint-Cloud and Clamart, near Paris, and in the Forest of Fontainebleau (1834-35). He went to Italy in 1835. He returned to Paris in 1836 and worked for François-Marius Granet in the painting restoration department of the Louvre.

His early works were much more heavily influenced by 17th-century Dutch painters, whom he copied in the Louvre. Later he was much influenced by the Barbizon SchoolGLOSSARYA group of naturalist landscape painters who worked in the vicinity of Barbizon, a village on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleu, southeast of Paris, in the 1840s and 1850s. Théodore Rousseau (French, 1812-1867) was the founder of the group. Other members of the group were Jean-Baptist Corot (French, 1796-1875), Narcisse Diaz de la Pena (French, 1807-1876), Constant Troyon (French, 1810-1865), Jules Dupré (French, 1811-1889), Jean-François Millet (French, 1814-1875), and Charles-François Daubigny (French, 1817-1878). Their approach constituted an art movement which eventually led to both Realism and Impressionism. Daubigny was the first of the plein air painters.. He was a friend of Corot and was admired by Monet: he thus forms a link between the Barbizon painters and the Impressionists.