Bird catching

Bocion's Bird Catching, painted in the 1850s, depicts a traditional lakeside activity on the shores of Lake Geneva. Bird catching with nets and decoys was a centuries-old practice in the Swiss lakeside communities that Bocion documented throughout his career. These intimate genre scenes, recording traditional activities that were disappearing from modern life, give Bocion's work documentary as well as artistic value.

Bocion's oil-on-canvas technique captures the outdoor scene with characteristic attention to the specific quality of light on Lake Geneva. The careful rendering of the landscape and the natural poses of the figures demonstrate his strength as an observer of lakeside rural life.