Oil painting, 'Luggage Boat', François Bocion, Swiss school, 1855

A barge laden with luggage and barrels on a lake with imposing mountains in the background; one of the passenger is wvins at someone with his hat.

Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend

Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, listed in the 1868 post-mortem register of the contents of his villa in Lausanne (V&A R/F MA/1/T1181) as 'Oil on Millboard. Luggage Boat. 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. Probably 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.
There is another version of this composition with a slight difference in the position of the figures in a private collection. The oval format can also be found in another composition showing the shore of the lake with figures (Victoria and Albert Museum - 1589-1869). The present painting and the latter present the particularity to combine a lake view with a genre scene. The name of the boat, 'le passager' inscribed on the stern, was used in French as the title of the painting. Bocion was profoundly inspired by the surrounding of Lake Leman between Geneva and Lausanne where he resided.
The focus on a group of figures at close is a recurrent compositional formula in Bocion's oeuvre throughout the 1850s.
Comparable compositions include: Comparable compositions include: Lake of Geneva, sailing boats, dated 1855, and A Barge, c.1855, both in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (see 1563-1869 and 1587-1869).
This painting was probably bought by the Rev. Townshend directly from the artist and displayed in his villa in Lausanne where it completed there a large collection of 19th-century landscapes paintings. The Victoria and Albert Museum owns the most comprehensive group of Bocion's paintings in the U.K.

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 probably executed shortly after Bocion's return to Lausanne and inaugurates one of the main thematic of the artist: lake views. Bocion combined here a genre scene, people crossing the lake on a ferry, and a lake view dominated by the Alps mountains in the background. Such subject matters and the interest in atmospheric effect and the direct observation of nature were characteristic of the Realist movement emerged in France in the 1840s. This painting is a fine example of Bocion's oeuvre characterised by peaceful scenes dominated by imposing mountains in the distance.

1594-1869