Oil painting, 'The Broom Maker', François Bocion, Swiss school, 1855

A young boy is seated against a clod; he wears a cap and a brown jacket, and holds a bundle of wood under his right arm; a village in the distance on the left; blue sky.

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 an 'Oil on millboard. The broom maker. 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.
This painting is a fine example of Bocion experimentation of different thematic during his early career. There are comparatively few portraits of characters such as this one in his oeuvre. Two similar compositions include: A Young Roman Girl, dated 1853, Private collection, and The Fisherman, dated 1855, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The handling of the paint, subject matter and palette revealed here the influence of Camille Corot and the Barbizon school he was in contact with while residing in France.
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 is a fine example of Bocion's early compositions when he was inspired by various subject matters. This full-length portrait of a young boy as a broom maker is reminiscent of the Realist interest in rustic subject matters and peasants' life. Bocion produced relatively few similar compositions and soon specialised in what would become the main thematic of his oeuvre: views of the surroundings of the Lake Leman.

1623-1869