Villerville, Normandy

Charles-François Daubigny's Villerville, Normandy (1886) was painted just before the Barbizon master's death in February 1878 — wait, Daubigny actually died in 1878, making a 1886 date questionable; this may be a posthumously dated work or one dated from its exhibition rather than creation. Villerville is a small fishing village near Honfleur on the Normandy coast, a site Daubigny knew well as part of the Barbizon school's embrace of the French countryside. His Normandy coastal subjects combine the atmospheric sensitivity developed in thirty years of landscape painting with the specific character of the Norman coastline.

Daubigny's late Normandy landscapes are rendered with the loose, tonal atmospheric approach of his mature style — paint applied in broad, confident strokes that capture the impression of outdoor light without labored detail. His palette is cool and tonal for Norman coastal subjects — the grey-greens of the sea, the pale ochres of the coast, the cloud-filled sky that dominates Norman light. The handling reflects decades of landscape observation, achieving atmospheric truth with the economy of total mastery.