Sketches: The Hotel de Ville, Tours and a Girl Playing (recto); Stork (verso)

Art Historical Context

Charles François Daubigny, a pioneering French landscape artist and key figure in the Barbizon School, created this intimate double-sided graphite sketch around 1837–1878, spanning much of his career. On the recto, delicate lines capture the grand Hôtel de Ville in Tours, France—a Renaissance-style town hall—alongside a playful girl in motion, blending architecture with everyday life. The verso features a quick study of a stork, hinting at Daubigny's lifelong fascination with nature's fleeting moments. These sketches, executed in graphite on smooth ivory wove paper (12.5 × 19.9 cm), exemplify 19th-century preparatory drawing techniques. Daubigny, a precursor to Impressionism, favored loose, expressive lines over rigid detail, often working en plein air to record light and atmosphere directly from observation. Housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints and Drawings department, this modest sheet reveals the artist's process: rapid notations that informed his luminous oil paintings of rural scenes. For visitors, this artwork offers a window into Daubigny's evolution from meticulous early studies to freer, proto-Impressionist gestures, celebrating the beauty in ordinary sights—from historic landmarks to whimsical wildlife.

About the Artist

Charles François Daubigny (French) · 1817 –1878

French, Paris 1817–1878 Paris