Rocky Landscape by Crepin d’Orleans

Oil painting on canvas, with frame

Rocky landscape with fishermen by a lake

To the best of my current knowledge, this beautiful painting Rocky Landscape with Fishermen by a Lake (oil on canvas, 85 x 125 cm) can be attributed the painter Louis-Philippe Crepin, known as Crepin d'Orleans (Paris, 1772–1851), appointed official marine painter in 1851.

A student of two of the most esteemed French landscape, view and marine painters of the 18th century, Claude Joseph Vernet (Avignon 1714–Paris 1789) and Hubert Robert (Paris 1733–1803), Crepin also became one of the first and most admired official marine painters of the early 19th century, with an atelier within the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies in Paris.

We can date our Landscape to around the final years of the 18th century, coinciding with the beginning of the painter's career. This was the period when Crepin created several compositions very close to Vernet's style, both in subject matter and painterly touch.

This was a series of landscapes in which he evokes the picturesque aspect of nature and the vivid relationship with the figures populating them, in which water already appears as a central component: “The Bathers” (Musée du Château de Fontainebleau), “The Waterfall” ( Musée du Louvre, Paris), “A River with Fishermen” (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours), and others that have recently appeared in international public auctions.

In our painting, we see compositional elements and stylistic tropes almost exactly like those of the paintings just mentioned. These include: gnarled trunks with twisting, some liquid brushstrokes, some light and soaring from rapid strokes; leaves painted one by one like droplets or just barely suggested; mossy rocks carved by time, pitted like fine cheeses, seemingly precarious yet merging with the environment around them; a side building described with realistic naïveté; water as smooth as a mirror like Northern Europe; the figures in local garb, on which the brush pauses meticulously in certain frivolous folds to then more quickly slip elsewhere (reminiscent of Hubert Robert's style). The second ground becomes almost liquid under the effect of a light that is sunnier, though still soft and ethereal.

In this landscape, Crepin proves himself to be an acute observer of nature and a skilled interpreter of its many effects, imbued with the defining sensitivity of the northern style, like Flemish or Dutch, of the Golden Age.

Louis-Philippe Crepin, known as Crepin d'Orleans (Paris, 1772–1851), appointed official marine painter in 1851. Oil painting on canvas, with frame Rocky landscape with fishermen by a lake To the best of my current knowledge, this beautiful painting Rocky Landscape with Fishermen by a Lake (oil on canvas, 85 x 125 cm) can be attributed the painter Louis-Philippe Crepin, known as Crepin d'Orleans (Paris, 1772–1851), appointed official marine painter in 1851. A student of two of the most esteemed French landscape, view and marine painters of the 18th century, Claude Joseph Vernet (Avignon 1714–Paris 1789) and Hubert Robert (Paris 1733–1803), Crepin also became one of the first and most admired official marine painters of the early 19th century, with an atelier within the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies in Paris. We can date our Landscape to around the final years of the 18th century, coinciding with the beginning of the painter's career. This was the period when Crepin created several compositions very close to Vernet's style, both in subject matter and painterly touch. This was a series of landscapes in which he evokes the picturesque aspect of nature and the vivid relationship with the figures populating them, in which water already appears as a central component: “The Bathers” (Musée du Château de Fontainebleau), “The Waterfall” ( Musée du Louvre, Paris), “A River with Fishermen” (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours), and others that have recently appeared in international public auctions. In our painting, we see compositional elements and stylistic tropes almost exactly like those of the paintings just mentioned. These include: gnarled trunks with twisting, some liquid brushstrokes, some light and soaring from rapid strokes; leaves painted one by one like droplets or just barely suggested; mossy rocks carved by time, pitted like fine cheeses, seemingly precarious yet merging with the environment around them; a side building described with realistic naïveté; water as smooth as a mirror like Northern Europe; the figures in local garb, on which the brush pauses meticulously in certain frivolous folds to then more quickly slip elsewhere (reminiscent of Hubert Robert's style). The second ground becomes almost liquid under the effect of a light that is sunnier, though still soft and ethereal. In this landscape, Crepin proves himself to be an acute observer of nature and a skilled interpreter of its many effects, imbued with the defining sensitivity of the northern style, like Flemish or Dutch, of the Golden Age.