Seascape at Villerville

Charles-François Daubigny painted this seascape at Villerville — a fishing village on the Calvados coast near Honfleur — as part of his sustained engagement with the Normandy coast in his final years. Villerville had been a sketching destination for the Barbizon circle and attracted artists including Corot, and Daubigny's presence there continued this tradition. The 1876 seascape belongs to his most freely painted period, when his beach and coastal subjects showed a looseness of handling that influenced the younger Impressionists directly, particularly through his advocacy of their work at the Salon jury.

The seascape is handled with Daubigny's characteristic directness — sky and water painted in broad, broken strokes that capture reflected light and movement without laboring the detail. His palette is cool and atmospheric, the Normandy light rendered with a grey luminosity quite different from Mediterranean brightness.