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Lot Essay
Isabey dominated marine painting in France during the July Monarchy (1830-48) and directly linked the British Romantics to the proto-Impressionists Eugène Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind. He was the son and student of Jean-Baptiste Isabey, David's stellar pupil, who was intimate with the Vernets, Gerard, Gericault and the Duchesse de Berry, functioned as court painter to the Bourbon kings, and is today recognised as one of the unsurpassed miniature portraitists in the history of the medium. Both Isabeys were prolific and exceptional lithographers.
As his father was orchestrating a retrospective exhibition of his own work in London, Eugène made the first of countless visits to Normandy in 1820 with Charles Nodier, Isadore Taylor and Alphonse de Cailleux. He also accompanied Nodier on a two-month tour of England and Scotland the following winter. Like his father, he would become a copious illustrator of their Voyages pittoresques. Pierre Miquel (Isabey) cited two separate accounts that Bonington was instrumental in persuading Eugène to become a professional artist despite his father's objections. His initial marine watercolors of 1821 are stylistically closer to Géricault and Eugéne Lami than to British models, although by mid-decade his work is almost indistinguishable from that of Bonington.
Isabey again visited London in June 1825 with a phalanx of young French painters. On the return voyage in August, he worked briefly in Calais with Louis Francia, Bonington, Colin and Delacroix, before embarking on a tour of the Channel coast as far as Trouville with Bonington.
Isabey's oil paintings of the 1820s are mostly untraced. Those exhibited in 1824 were described by Auguste Jal as small marines in the Englesh manner, yet 'firmer' in their effects. Four marine oils were exhibited at the 1827 Salon, when Isabey was awarded a gold medal. Charles Farcy dismissed them as more facile than talented, but Adolphe Thiers had the good sense to see in them a fresh alternative to the eighteenth-century pastiches foisted on the public by Théodore Gudin and Louis Garneray. Jal was especially taken with the seductive tone of a picture titled Beach at Honfleur.
A painting of the scale of this example was probably one of those Salon entries. If so, the dimensions match those of either the Beach at Honfleur or the picture titled in the catalogue Beach at Trouville, which belonged to the Duchesse de Berry. The former seems most plausible on the evidence of the depicted architecture and terrain. Isabey had spent much of the summer of 1826 sketching at Honfleur and its environs. In June of 1828, he again toured the coast between Honfleur and Trouville. His companions were Huet and Charles Mozin. As further confirmation of the location depicted in the present work, Patrick Noon cites Claude Monet's painting of the same shoreline in The Lighthouse by the Hospice, 1864 currently housed in the Kunsthaus, Zurich (D. Wildenstein, Monet, 1996, vol. II, no. 38).
We are grateful to Patrick Noon for allowing us to reproduce his essay from Crossing the Channel, British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism in its entirety.
As his father was orchestrating a retrospective exhibition of his own work in London, Eugène made the first of countless visits to Normandy in 1820 with Charles Nodier, Isadore Taylor and Alphonse de Cailleux. He also accompanied Nodier on a two-month tour of England and Scotland the following winter. Like his father, he would become a copious illustrator of their Voyages pittoresques. Pierre Miquel (Isabey) cited two separate accounts that Bonington was instrumental in persuading Eugène to become a professional artist despite his father's objections. His initial marine watercolors of 1821 are stylistically closer to Géricault and Eugéne Lami than to British models, although by mid-decade his work is almost indistinguishable from that of Bonington.
Isabey again visited London in June 1825 with a phalanx of young French painters. On the return voyage in August, he worked briefly in Calais with Louis Francia, Bonington, Colin and Delacroix, before embarking on a tour of the Channel coast as far as Trouville with Bonington.
Isabey's oil paintings of the 1820s are mostly untraced. Those exhibited in 1824 were described by Auguste Jal as small marines in the Englesh manner, yet 'firmer' in their effects. Four marine oils were exhibited at the 1827 Salon, when Isabey was awarded a gold medal. Charles Farcy dismissed them as more facile than talented, but Adolphe Thiers had the good sense to see in them a fresh alternative to the eighteenth-century pastiches foisted on the public by Théodore Gudin and Louis Garneray. Jal was especially taken with the seductive tone of a picture titled Beach at Honfleur.
A painting of the scale of this example was probably one of those Salon entries. If so, the dimensions match those of either the Beach at Honfleur or the picture titled in the catalogue Beach at Trouville, which belonged to the Duchesse de Berry. The former seems most plausible on the evidence of the depicted architecture and terrain. Isabey had spent much of the summer of 1826 sketching at Honfleur and its environs. In June of 1828, he again toured the coast between Honfleur and Trouville. His companions were Huet and Charles Mozin. As further confirmation of the location depicted in the present work, Patrick Noon cites Claude Monet's painting of the same shoreline in The Lighthouse by the Hospice, 1864 currently housed in the Kunsthaus, Zurich (D. Wildenstein, Monet, 1996, vol. II, no. 38).
We are grateful to Patrick Noon for allowing us to reproduce his essay from Crossing the Channel, British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism in its entirety.