Oil painting, 'Lake Geneva, with Sailing Boats', François Bocion, Swiss school, 1855

Sailing boats at sunset on a lake with mountains in the background under a large cloudy sky.

Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend

Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, listed in the 1868 post-mortem register of the contents of London house (V&A R/F MA/1/T1181) in the attic as 'Oil on Millboard. Lake of Geneva. By F. Bocion. Signed. Swiss. Dated 1855'; bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, 1868.

Historical significance: This painting is one of a group of 16 paintings bequeathed to the museum by the Rev. Townshend who had a villa in Lausanne where he spent the winter.
It is a fine example of the central thematic of lake views in Bocion’s oeuvre. Executed shortly after his return to Lausanne from Paris, this painting witnesses the influence of the Realist painters such as Courbet and Leon Berthoud, The support suggests that the artist depicted outdoors directly after the motif but this does not exclude that he reworked the composition in his studio as Bocion used both practises.
Here particularly interesting is the palette composed of hues of white and mauve so as to provide the sense of an evening light with large areas of shadows and the warm vanishing sunlight.
This composition and broad brushwork is reminiscent of the Realist painters Bocion was in contact with while residing in Paris but also displays a very personal style he would gradually improve throughout his career.
Comparable compositions include: The Bocion Family Fishing, dated 1877, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, and Sailing Boats at Sunset, dated 1885, Musée Jenish, Vevey.
This painting was bought by the Rev. Townshend who had the habit to spend his winters in his villa in Lausanne and displayed in his London house. It completed there a large collection of 19th-century landscapes paintings and it is not unlikely that he knew personally the artist.

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.

François Bocion (1828-1890) was born in Lausanne. He first trained with Christian Gottlieb Steinlen (1779-1847) in Vevey and subsequently with François Bonnet (1811-1894) in Lausanne. In Paris in 1845, Bocion entered the atelier of Louis-Aimé Grosclaude (1784-1869) and later that of Charles Gleyre (1806-1874) and befriended Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) and other important exponents of the Realist movement. Back in Lausanne in 1849 he became a teacher at the Ecole moyenne et industrielle of Lausane, a position he held until his death. At the same time, he had an extensive output with several travels abroad. He exhibited in Paris, Vienna, Anvers, London and was a founder member of the Swiss society of watercolorists (1884).

This painting was executed shortly after Bocion's return to Lausanne and inaugurates one of the main thematic of the artist: lake views. Bocion focused here on the rendering of sunset light in a broad albeit restrained brushwork. The attention on atmospheric effects and the direct observation of nature were characteristic of the Realist movement emerged in France in the 1840s. His oeuvre is marked by peaceful scenes dominated by imposing mountains in the distance.

1563-1869