Master Watercolors

N. Diaz Virgil de La Pena

Two figures in a French landscape by the stream.
Watercolor.

This important watercolor will be on the open market this month in Tennessee USA.

Diaz de la Peña, Narcisse (Bordeaux, 1807; Menton, 1876).
French painter, born of Spanish parents who had settled in France as political refugees. He began his career (c.1823) as a colourist in a porcelain factory and took up painting in the late 1820s, first exhibiting at the Salon in 1831. His early paintings included scènes galantes, imaginative oriental subjects, and still-lifes, usually small in size and rich in colour and texture.

He soon became the friend of Honoré Daumier. About 1840 Diaz began to paint landscapes in the forest of Fontainebleau near the village of Barbizon. These landscapes, which dominated his work for the rest of his career. He was helpful and sympathetic to the Impressionists, especially Renoir, whom he met in 1861 painting at Barbizon.







m.w.

posted by P.S. @ 10:23 AM