Artwork story
About Landscape with Ducks
The artist and artwork
Charles-François Daubigny painted Landscape with Ducks in 1872, compressing a broad French riverscape onto a fifteen-by-twenty-six-and-a-half-inch oil-on-wood panel. A low sun glows orange through the upper-right sky while dense trees gather on the left and repeat in dark reflections. Near the center, women washing clothes become quick sparks of color. The ducks named in the title are quieter still: small white shapes glimmering at the water's left edge.
The world around it
Daubigny was already a successful Salon painter and is closely associated with the Barbizon generation's turn toward direct observation of nature. He refitted a ferryboat as a floating studio, Le Bottin, so he could work along the Oise and study changing water, weather, and light. The Franco-Prussian War drove Daubigny and his family to London in October 1870; they returned to France in June 1871. By 1872, France was beginning life under the Third Republic, while Daubigny's loose touch and luminous surfaces were helping open a path toward Impressionism. He knew younger painters including Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro and argued for their inclusion in the Salon.
A detail to notice
The title makes the ducks sound like the main event, but Daubigny turns finding them into a reward for looking. They occupy only a sliver of the lower-left bank, their pale feathers catching just enough light to separate them from grass and shadow. The river itself does more visual work: smooth dark passages hold the trees like a mirror, then vertical and broken strokes disturb the surface nearer the sunset. That alternation makes the water feel both still and moving. Daubigny balances the orange opening in the sky with the heavy tree mass across the panel, then lets the laundresses and ducks puncture the dusk with tiny notes of life.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is painting made in Oil on wood and held in the Robert Lehman Collection department.
Recorded dimensions include 15 in. × 26 1/2 in. (38.1 × 67.3 cm); Framed: 21 1/2 × 32 1/2 in. (54.6 × 82.6 cm).
Subject terms include Ducks and Landscapes. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Robert Lehman Collection, 1975.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23T20:04:15.766Z.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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