LA JETTĖE DE FLEUVE

Oil on canvas, signed

27.5 x 46.2 cms
10 ¾ x 18 ¼ inches

Alexandre Defaux was a landscape painter who was born on 27th September 1826 in Bercy. He was a pupil of the major Impressionist Jean Baptiste Camille Corot and became equally adept working in oils as in watercolours producing paintings of great delicacy.

“Vue de carrière abandonné” was his first exhibited painting at the Paris Salon in 1859 and he continued to show regularly there until his death in 1900. He was awarded a third class medal in 1874, second class in 1879 and the gold in 1900. The Légion d’Honneur was accorded to him in 1881.

Defaux’s principle subject matter was views in Normandy and the forest around Fontainebleau. He displays the influence, charm and qualities of colouration of his master and was gifted with a very refined feeling for nature. He was a member of the Barbizon School which had been founded by, among others, Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Charles François Daubigny and Jean François Millet. Inspired by John Constable’s paintings shown at the Paris Salon in 1824, they met in the village of Barbizon in the Fontainebleau forest and resolved to devote themselves to depicting realism rather than the romantic movement which prevailed at that time.