Oil Painting, 'Besançon', Charles Jules Nestor Bavoux, 1864

Lanscape with the view of a city on the right and hills on the left, in the centre people bathing in the river while a boat is siling on the left foreground.

Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend

Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, listed in the 1868 post-mortem register of the contents of his Lausanne villa (V&A R/F MA/1/T1181) as 'Oil on canvas. Besançon. By Bavon'; bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, 1868.

Ref : Parkinson, Ronald, Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860. Victoria & Albert Museum, HMSO, London, 1990. p.xix.

'Chauncy Hare Townshend (1798-1868) was born into a wealthy family, only son of Henry Hare Townsend of Busbridge Hall, Godalming, Surrey. Educated at Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge (BA 1821). Succeeded to the family estates 1827, when he added 'h' to the Townsend name. He had taken holy orders, but while he always referred to himself as 'Rev.' on the title pages of his books, he never practised his vocation... . Very much a dilettante in the eighteenth-century sense, he moved in the highest social and literary circles; a great friend of Charles Dickens (he was the dedicatee of Great Expectations) with whom he shared a fascination of mesmerism... Bulwer Lytton described his life's 'Beau-deal of happiness' as 'elegant rest, travel, lots of money - and he is always ill and melancholy'. Of the many watercolours and British and continental oil paintings he bequeathed to the V&A, the majority are landscapes. He is the first identifiable British collector of early photographs apart from the Prince Consort, particularly landscape photography, and also collected gems and geological specimens.'

Historical significance: This painting is a fine example of Bavoux' landscape paintings. It depicts the surrounding wall of the city of Besançon edified by the Marquis de Vauban (1633-1707) between 1668 and 1711 and recently listed by the UNESCO as World Heritage Site. There runs the river Doubs.
Characteristic of Realist paintings is the subject matter showing small figures entertaining themselves (here bathing in the river) as well as the rendering of a bright sunlight under a large cloudy sky.
This painting was probably made in open-air from a high point of view so as to dominate the entire valley and provide a sense of panoramic view. The broad and sketchy brushwork is typical of the Realist painters focusing on direct observation of nature.
Although less known than Corot or Daubigny, Bavoux is sometimes associated with the school of Barbizon and is indubitably a realist painter. He was deeply inspired by the countryside surrounding his birthplace near Besançon, where he settled quite early in his career. Bavoux's inspiration from nature was also manifest in his production of still-lifes, especially in the late period. He is a rare artist, whose landscapes are little represented in public institutions.
This work was bequeathed to the museum by the Rev. Townshend whose collection included many landscape paintings in Realist vein, providing thus a good example of a 19th-century collector's taste.

19th-century French art is marked by a succession of movements based on a more or less close relationship with nature. At the beginning of the century, Romantic artists were fascinated by nature they interpreted as a mirror of the mind. They investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious and the occult. This movement was heralded in France by such painter as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). In its opposition to academic art and its demand for a modern style Realism continued the aims of the Romantics. They assumed that reality could be perceived without distortion or idealization, and sought after a mean to combine the perception of the individual with objectivity. This reaction in French painting against the Grand Manner is well represented by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) who wrote a 'Manifesto of Realism', entitled Le Réalisme published in Paris in 1855. These ideas were challenged by the group of the Barbizon painters, who formed a recognizable school from the early 1830s to the 1870s and developed a free, broad and rough technique. They were mainly concerned by landscape painting and the rendering of light. The works of Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), Jules Dupré (1811-1889), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Constant Troyon (1810-1865) and Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) anticipate somehow the plein-air landscapes of the Impressionists.

Charles Jules Nestor Bavoux, (1824-1887) was a French painter who specialised in landscape painting. A pupil of François Edouard Picot (1786-1868) at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He settled in Besançon but exhibited regularly at the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris until 1882.

This painting is a fine example of the Realist landscape paintings that developed during the second half of the 19th century and eventually culminated with the Impressionism. This work depicts the city of Besançon and the river Doubs seen from a high point of view outside the city. The artist focused here on the rendering of light, which was a particular point of concern for Realist painters.

1620-1869