Charles François Dubigny (1817-1878), also known as Charles François Doubigny, was one of the representatives of the French Barbizon School, known as the "Beethoven who painted water", and is considered an important pioneer of Impressionism.
Born in Paris, France, to a family of artists, his father, Edmond-François Dubigny, was a landscape painter, and his uncle, Pierre Dubigny, was a miniature painter. It was this kind of artistic family and strong artistic atmosphere that played an important role in Dubigny's painting career and laid the groundwork for his later artistic achievements. At the age of 19, Dubigny used the money he earned from his hard work to study in Italy, where he immersed himself in nature and painted Italian landscapes.
Initially, Dubigny's works painted in the traditional style did not attract social attention. So the style changed years after 1843 when he settled in Barbizon and went out to work in nature. He decided to get out of the studio and immerse himself in nature, feeling and listening to the beautiful scenery of nature, so as to find his own way of painting. Dubigny first experienced the charm of authenticity in the field of illustration and copper engraving. This experience played a significant role in his transformation as a pure landscape painter. As an illustrator, Dubigny illustrated the French writers of the time, including those who contributed greatly to French realism, such as Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, Eugène Sue's The Secret of Paris, and Balzac's works. The description of the natural landscape of France in this work is a great inspiration to Dubiny, and more importantly, all the landscapes that Dubini painted for Eugène Sue's ** are created by forgetting the fictional nature of historical landscape painting and creating realistic scenes with seeing is believing.
In a way, Dubigny's creative process has further deepened his understanding and knowledge of French nature, and has achieved an effective combination of this understanding and his own creation. He abandoned the popular painting method of "sketching outdoors and painting indoors" at that time, and instead used the attitude of creation to sketch landscapes. What's more, in 1852 he met the French landscape painter Corot at Optimworth, and since then he has continued Corot's artistic style and sketched outdoors.
As with the Barbizon school style, Dubigny seldom painted in the studio, advocating to go out of the studio and sketch the scene in natural light, and then use the sketch as the basis to create landscape paintings, depicting poetic and beautiful pictures, in order to obtain a real and fresh feeling and brighten the tone of the picture. His paintings are all about the ever-changing colors of nature, but unlike other members of the Barbizon School, Dubigny prefers to depict landscapes objectively and faithfully as they are. He mainly depicts the natural scenery and rural life of France, pays great attention to the richness of colors, pays attention to the colors of nature, and expresses the colors that nature suggests to him, especially the depiction of natural light and shadow.
From 1852 onwards, he was again influenced by Gustave Courbet. In the paintings of the 50s and 70s of the 19th century, you can see not only the simple life of European peasants during this period, but also the footprints of Dubigny's travels. This is because at the age of 40 he bought a small boat and set up a studio on it, named "The Boat of Waves", which made it easy for him to study the views of rivers, lakes and ponds. He often took the "Wave Boat" along the Seine and Oise rivers to observe and depict the scenery on both sides, and his long-distance sketching allowed him to capture the sky and clouds and the twilight. Faced with the sunlit waters of rivers and lakes, Dubigny has made a long-term study of water and its waves. The tranquility and waves of the water are in full view, and he can't hold back the joy in his heart and paints it. This creative attitude of being outside and listening attentively has led him to paint many excellent works.
However, it should be noted that the emphasis on the harmony and unity between man and nature is one of the most striking features of Dubigny's paintings. In the case of Dubigny's masterpiece "Harvest Season", these characteristics are vividly displayed. He vividly portrays the atmosphere of the exuberance, including the wheat in the sun, the crops adjacent to the wheat fields, and the scenery in the distance, all of which form a rich palette that is in fact the first time that Dubigny has united man and nature in the process of creation.
The concept of "the unity of man and nature" does not mean that Dubigny's works are immutable, and his style is varied, some of which give people a sense of tranquility, while others give people a sense of movement and unease. However, most of his landscapes give a sense of calm and tranquility. This is the ultimate pursuit determined in his continuous sketching and creative exploration, and he no longer paints the scenery with severe mountain rocks and beautiful decorative trees in the past, but chooses ordinary scenery in the countryside and tries to paint as realistically as possible. In 1855, he painted the landscape painting "The Sluice Gate of Optworth", which he painted in Optworth, and the arrangement of the mountains in the painting is cleverly expressed in large areas, which is magnificent and convincing, which also shows that Dubini's attitude towards life is positive.
This sense of grandeur is even more evident in Dubigny's other landscapes painted by Optimworth, such as Optimworth's Grand Canyon, which critics of the time considered even more majestic. The most important feature of this painting is that it skillfully shows the true appearance of nature, which is simple and magnificent. The Peasant Drinks a Donkey is poetic, and in this work Dubigny is committed to giving the picture a grandeur and serenity. Dubigny's landscapes are gentle and quiet, both in terms of scene painting and creative painting.
In 1866, Dubigny visited England and returned home for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. In London he met Claude Monet, and together they went to the Netherlands. Upon his return to Orphes, he met another important Impressionist painter, Paul Cézanne, and created several paintings in Overs.
Dubigny likes to use thick colors to accumulate light in the center of the picture, and the woods in the midst of lightning and thunder and rainstorms are his favorite subjects. He got rid of the truthful depictions with classical tendencies and naturalistic colors, and his brushstrokes were relaxed and natural, and his large-scale brushwork and impasto made him an early pioneer of Impressionism, and it can be said that Dubigny was a bridge between realism and impressionism. This development also led his work from desolate and gloomy to bright, colourful tones, as he once said, "Light has its own language." This language should be spoken or sung, and it should never be shouted. ”
In line with Dubigny's theory, his paintings are mostly sun-drenched and full of light; Most of his compositions are framed by banners, which have a sense of brightness and openness, and are full of natural vitality. There is no dramatic contrast of light or strong decorative effect in the work. For example, his "Spring" and "June Fields" are paintings that depict sunny and warm spring breeze scenery with large brushstrokes of separation and compounding. In addition, Dubigny liked to depict scenes of rivers in landscapes, and his study of water made him the most adept painter of the Barbizon School, and he could be described as a master of depicting river landscapes.
What you feel in Dubigny's paintings is the freshness of French landscape painting. His works often feature scenes of human figures in motion, which is similar to some of Miller's landscape paintings, especially those with scenes of human labor. Of course, there are also great differences between Dubidny's paintings and Miller's works, for example, compared with Miller's, Dubidney's paintings have been devoid of a pessimistic and sad atmosphere, and are more positive, optimistic and cheerful in life.
Dubigny is faithful to the reality of the landscape, and he uses a different way to depict the rural landscape than other painters, not only in the details of the objective part, but also in the true grasp of the colors of reality. Dubigny's paintings are poetic and lyrical while respecting objectivity, and in his works the viewer can see and feel the real and poetic nature. As Dubini said, "Nature is the only one, and that is enough." ”
It is precisely because of Dubini's way of painting that respects both reality and nature and self-feelings, and is more able to get closer to the audience's heart with simple narration, that this way of going deep into nature and sketching scenes and creative techniques has had a great influence on the later impressionist painters.
After his first visit to Paris, Monet, one of the representatives and founders of Impressionism, confessed that of all the members of the Barbizon School, Dubigny had the most profound influence on him. In view of the fact that Dubigny had created the "Bo Boat", Monet also learned from him to build a "floating studio". Monet once highly praised Dubini's "Sunset near Viellville". The work is a live sketch in which Dubigny holds the canvas in the open sky with a wooden stake, waiting for a long time for the moment when the large clouds are swept away by the wind. When the wind blows, he writes down the wonders of the moment, uninhibited by details, high-spirited and agitated, and the thick picture seems to be in turmoil.
The post-impressionist master Van Gogh was also influenced by Dubigny, and Van Gogh created two paintings of "Dubigny's Garden", which shows his admiration for Dubigny.
At the time, however, most critics thought that Dubidny's work was too shoddy and lacked a complete sense of work, believing that this was due to the fact that Dubigny did not have a rigorous formal education, which was not the case. In fact, Dubigny's painting method was mainly from the Romantics, but his direct depiction of nature brightened up his colors and made him discourage the path of academic painters and become a professional landscape painter. The simplicity of Dubigny's work and his excellent grasp of natural light and color are what make him unique, and even Corot thinks that Dubigny's realistic portrayal of life and vividness surpass Rousseau's.
As an outstanding art master, Dubigny is a household name in France, and has experienced many periods of painting art in his life, and has been influenced by different artistic trends in different painting art periods. After the baptism of time and the superposition of history, Dubigny's works have become a brilliant classic that cannot be replicated in the long history of Western art. These works are not only purely expressions of Dubigny's personal language, but also record the avant-garde spirit and humanistic brilliance of the era. As a result, Dubigny was awarded the Legre of Honor by France, which also issued stamps and postcards bearing Dubigny's portrait in honor of the leading figure of the Barbizon School.