Oil painting, 'The Shore of the Leman Lake with Figures', François Bocion, Swiss school, ca. 1855

A group of figures on the shore of a lake with a rowing boat coming alongside and distant sailing boats in the left foreground, vanishing mountains in the background.

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. Landscape: The Shore of a Lake. By F. Bocion. Signed. Swiss. Present century'; 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 lake has been identified as the Leman lake in Geneva, a recurrent subject in Bocion's oeuvre.
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. The focus on figures in the foreground is a recurrent compositional formula of the 1850s.
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 focused here on the rendering of sunset light with backlighting effect, especially on the boat, in a broad albeit restrained brushwork. The attention on 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 his oeuvre characterised by peaceful scenes dominated by imposing mountains in the distance.

1589-1869