Jean Ferdinand Chaigneau

JEAN-FERDINAND CHAIGNEAU (Bordeaux, 1830- Barbizon, 1906).
"Lake landscape at sunset". 1899.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower corner.
Measurements: 83 x 117 cm; 117 x 150 cm (frame).

This twilight scene is impregnated with visual lyricism. A solitary fisherman, wearing a straw hat, is absorbed in his work. Two small boats rest beside him, stranded on the shore of a serene lake, whose waters reflect the last gleams of the vast sky. The sunset impregnates everything with iridescent and amber lights. The landscape, of dense foliage and wet grasslands, escapes into a horizon lined with trees.

Jean Ferdinand Chaigneau was a French painter and engraver of the Barbizon School, nephew of Raymond Eugène Goethals (1804-1864), a landscape and marine painter. He was known mainly for his landscapes, rural scenes with animals (especially sheep) and, to a lesser extent, for his portraits. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was a pupil of Jules Coignet. He also received training in the workshop of Charles-François Daubigny, an influential painter of the Barbizon School, which explains his inclination towards landscape. He exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon from 1848 until the end of his life, where he received several medals. His work is currently preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts in Bordeaux, the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon, the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.