Théophile Clément Blanchard - Landscape Of Normandy

Théophile Clément BLANCHARD 1820 - 1849 Oil on canvas 27 x 40 cm (45 x 58 cm with the frame) Signed lower right "Blanchard" Pretty 19th century gilded wooden frame French painter, lithographer and illustrator, Théophile Clément Blanchard is part of of those painters of the romantic era who represented picturesque views of France like Alexis Daligé de Fontenay or Eugène Cicéri. These painters traveled a lot and sought out picturesque sites, particularly in Normandy, Brittany, Switzerland and the Pyrenees. Blanchard thus participated in the illustration of “Picturesque and Romantic Voyages in Old France”. But the works of this romantic painter are rare because Blanchard died very young at twenty-nine! We still know of him, in particular, a view of Bugey (dated 1846) which is kept at the Louvre Museum and a “Delicious Landscape” (from the 1840s) at the Salies de Bagnères de Bigorre Museum and which recalls our painting. Our painting which is undoubtedly a small sketch which includes all the elements of the left part of the final composition of the Salies museum, with a more lively style and a tighter composition. We see the relief, the trees, the characteristic type of dwelling of the long-roofed farmhouse that descends almost to the ground, as well as the sea and the cliffs in the distance. Blanchard will also take up this original point of view with an arm of the river which starts in the center of the composition this time since he will add a straight part to the final composition with another edge of the river with trees and horses. We see even more distinctly in the painting in the Salies museum that it is a Normandy landscape with the sea in the background, the cliffs and the Norman cows.