French Barbizon Riverbank Oil Painting by Alexandre René Véron

Alexandre René Véron was a painter of light on water, and this small panel shows exactly why. He catches a riverbank in the warm light of early afternoon, the far bank and its bridge dissolving into a luminous silver sky while the near trees and figures hold in cool shadow, so the whole scene breathes real air and real light. He works it on wood with a miniaturist’s precision, every passage made to carry atmosphere rather than detail for its own sake.

About the Artist
The son of a locksmith, Véron rose to exhibit at the Paris Salon, the official summit of French art, from 1848 onward, and his paintings entered museums across France and Britain, among them the fine arts museums of Lyon, Nantes, and Le Mans, and the Bowes Museum in England. For a landscape painter, that is the real measure of standing: a place on the walls of the nation’s museums, earned more than a century ago and held ever since.

He gave his life to landscape. He went to the Forest of Fontainebleau, fell in with the Barbizon painters and the circle of Charles-François Daubigny, the great painter of French rivers, and made the open air his studio. He worked the very riverbanks, Argenteuil, Asnières, Auvers-sur-Oise, the Seine and the Oise, that Monet, Van Gogh, and the Impressionists would soon make famous to the world, painting the same water and light a few years before they did.

Why We Love It
The moment you lay eyes on it, it’s the light. Véron’s handling of light and shadow is what makes this painting so alive you can almost feel the warmth of the afternoon and the cool beneath the trees. Small as it is, it holds a whole afternoon within it: the figures on the riverbank, the boat on the water, the bridge in the distance, all beautifully preserved after more than a century. Fully antique, it still slips into a modern room with ease and lifts everything around it. The frame is a showpiece of its own, its deep gilt profile and richly ornamented leaf borders holding the painting like a jewel.

Key Features:

• Origin: Paris, France
• Medium: Oil on wood panel
• Period: 19th century
• Signature: Signed lower right, "AR Véron"
• Dimensions: 10 3/4" x 9 9/16″ with frame
• Condition: Excellent antique condition. The antique frame has a small loss at the rear of the lower-left corner, exposing the underlying gesso and wood. The loss is discreet when viewed straight on but visible from certain angles. Please see photos for details. 
• This piece will be shipped from Los Angeles.