Charles-François Daubigny: Finding new perspectives

Daubigny’s reputation as both a professional printmaker and painter was well established during his lifetime. By the mid-19th century, he became associated with a group of artists known as the Barbizon School of painters.

The Barbizon School was an informal community of artists who placed great importance on painting directly from and in nature. They worked in the French village of Barbizon and the surrounding forests of Fontainebleau (south-east of Paris).

In this oil painting, 'St. Paul's from the Surrey Side', Daubigny transports us back to 19th-century London. He places us firmly on the bustling south bank of the Thames.  

It is a view that captures the unrelenting industrialisation of a growing urban landscape, shrouded under a dense blanket of fog and pollution. Daubigny presents this stifling atmosphere through his heavy use of colour – creams, beiges, greys and pinks.

Although it is likely that Daubigny started work on this view while he was in London, the painting is dated 1873, so it may have been finished after his return to France. It is thought that Daubigny painted the sky in two separate stages.

In choosing this particular view of London, Daubigny paints some of the city's most famous historical landmarks. The composition is carefully considered, with horizontal structures positioned strikingly against the looming figure of Saint Paul's Cathedral.

The immense shadowy cathedral emerges through a haze of dense smoke and cloud. When Daubigny visited London in 1870, the cathedral was the tallest building in the city, standing at 111m (365 feet).

Daubigny's London is in an unrelenting state of movement – an evolving and growing city adapting to the changes of industrialisation.

The river Thames is a bustling site of activity, with the immediate foreground of the painting crowded with tightly packed, tethered barges.

Meanwhile, paddle steamers belch out smoke as they pass under Blackfriars Bridge and past the gas holders of the City of London Gasworks – barely visible at the very left side of the painting.