Oil Painting, 'Girl with Dogs', Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña, 1840s

A young girl standing in a wood, holding a puppy in her arms while a dog sits at her feet.

Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend

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 Diaz de la Peña's genre pictures, a category in which he specialised alongside landscape paintings.
It shows a young lady in a woody landscape holding a dog in her arms while another on the left hand-side is looking at her. Dogs are generally intended as an allegory of fidelity. This composition provides therefore a sense of mystery, increased by the innocent look of the young lady. Diaz de la Peña focused here on the rendering of light, highlighting the pallor of the lady's flesh and outfit in contrast with the dark shadow of the wood in the background.
This type of composition and technique of execution are very close to a painting in the Louvre showing a very similar model: L'éplorée (R.F.1409). These paintings probably date from the same early period, around the 1840s.
This painting is a good example of his free, unfinished technique in a light almost pastel palette, which the artist would intensify later having a certain influence on artists he advised such as Adolphe Monticelli (1824-1886) and Auguste Renoir (1841-1919).

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.

Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876) was a French painter from Spanish origins. He first worked as a porcelain painter in 1825 but shortly after started training with the artist François Souchon (1787-1857). He soon became the friend of some of the most famous exponents of the Barbizon school such as Honoré Daumier (1808-1879), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867) and Paul Huet (1803-1869). He regularly exhibited landscapes and genre scenes at the Salon from 1831 to 1859. At the end of his life, he was admired by the new generation of artists who were about to form the Impressionist movement.

This painting is a fine example of Diaz de la Peña's early output. It shows a young lady in a woody landscape with dogs. The pastel palette and strong emphasis on the rendering of light places this painting at the beginning of the artist career, showing already a free, broken brushwork and interest in naturalism which would became the hallmark of the Barbizon school.

1535-1869