Boat ride and departure for the hunt, 19th Century French School

French or English school of the mid-19th century

Boat ride and departure for the hunt

Hued oil on canvas.

Dimensions: 25.4 x 32.5 cm.

Nineteenth-century wood and gilded stucco frame (sold separately €150)

Charming outdoor scene depicting an elegant company gathered by a river before a boat ride and hunting party. Riders, dogs and figures in refined costumes enliven this delicate composition in a rolling landscape bathed in soft light.

In the foreground, several beautifully observed hunting dogs bring vivacity and naturalness to the scene, while a boatman prepares the boat to the sound of a hunting horn. The background reveals a vast landscape treated in atmospheric blue-gray tones characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century Romantic painting.

The work seduces with the finesse of its small figures, the care given to anecdotal details and its elegant aristocratic atmosphere evoking the leisure and hunting scenes popular under the July Monarchy and the Second Empire. The composition also displays affinities with certain English productions of the same period, notably in the treatment of horses and dogs.

The canvas was formerly lined.

Very fine original wood and gilded stucco frame with rocaille decoration.