Oil painting, 'Horses at Plough', Charles Humbert, Swiss school, 1850

On a summit of a hill, a white and a black horses laden with fur and looking towards the spectator, a dog rests at their feet and a cow stands behind them in a ditch; on the left a man is coming back carrying a bucket, in the background a flat landscape under a wide cloudy sky.

Bequeathed by Rev.,Chauncey Hare Townshend

Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, 1868

Historical significance: Although Humbert trained in Ingres' atelier in Paris, his oeuvre is much more indebted to the Realist movement rather than the Neo-classical aesthetic developed by the master. Such animal paintings with cows and horses in bright landscapes are reminiscent of the Dutch 17th-century imagery that was revived during the first half of the century. Rosa Bonheur and her brother, Auguste-François, produced similar compositions strongly reminiscent of Karel Dujardin's œuvre (c. 1622-1678) but also resulting from the revived interest in direct observation of nature.
Similar compoistion by Humbert include: Mountain landscape with animals, Ariana Museum, Geneva and Pasture with cows and goats, Musée Rath, Geneva.

19th-century Western 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.

Jean Charles Ferdinand Humbert (1813-1881) was born in Geneva. He became the pupil of Ingres in Paris and later of Diday in Geneva. In 1842, he was awarded a medal in Paris and was a member of the St Petersburg Academy.

Humbert was essentially an animal painter and this work is a fine example of his output of the 1850s. The subject matter is inspired from the rustic life of the people in the Alps where he travelled with Calame and Diday. The interest in the rustic life is characteristic of the Realist movement emerged in the 1840s in France under the influence of Corot and Courbet, which spread in Europe throughout the 19th century.

1605-1869