Landscape in Auvergne
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 55.25 x 83.19 cm (21 3/4 x 32 3/4 in.) framed: 71.1 x 97.8 x 6 cm (28 x 38 1/2 x 2 3/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Department
CF
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Ruth Carter Stevenson in memory of Philip Conisbee
Accession Number
2008.132.1
Art Historical Context
Henri-Joseph Harpignies *Landscape in Auvergne* (1870) captures the rugged beauty of central France's volcanic Auvergne region in a classic oil-on-canvas format. Measuring 55.25 x 83.19 cm, this work exemplifies the 19th-century French tradition of plein-air-inspired landscapes, where artists like Harpignies celebrated nature's grandeur with luminous skies and textured foliage. Oil on canvas allowed him to layer rich earth tones and subtle atmospheric effects, evoking the region's misty valleys and ancient craters during a time of national turmoil—the Franco-Prussian War. A student of Camille...
About the Artist
Henri-Joseph Harpignies · 1819–1916
Henri-Joseph Harpignies (1819–1916) was a French landscape painter and watercolorist of extraordinary longevity whose career spanned nearly the entire history of nineteenth-century French art. Born in Valenciennes in northern France, he came to painting relatively late, beginning serious study only in his late twenties under Jean-Alexis Achard, a landscape painter working in the naturalist traditi...