River bank in the Doubs - Emile Isenbart (1846-1921)

Oil on canvas signed lower left
Dimensions: H. 133 cm x W. 100 cm

At the end of the 19th century, Emile Isenbart established himself as Franche-Comté's finest landscape painter. A native of the Doubs region, Isenbart's paintings of the Besançon area and the French Jura are peaceful and beautiful. He became interested in painting at an early age. He was a pupil of Antonin Clément Fanart (1831-1903), an excellent realist painter whose quality and forcefulness are on a par with those of Gustave Courbet of the same period.

Isenbart painted a few mythological subjects, but his immense talent shone through in his mountain views and waterscapes. From 1872, the artist exhibited at the Salon in Paris, and at the Salon des Artistes Français, of which he was a member in 1888. In 1897, he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. Emile Isenbart exhibited landscapes of the banks of the Doubs and the heights of the Jura on several occasions in Vienna and Munich. He won medals at the Universal Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900.

Isenbart's touch is alert, realistic and at the same time impressionistic. His compositions are highly studied, and his technique for depicting rivers and torrents is quite simply remarkable: Isenbart is probably the French artist who best represented the reflections and ripples of water.

Works by this delicate painter are in the collections of several important French museums, including a drawing entitled “Perspective de prairies avec des collines à l'horizon” held by the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Isenbart was also responsible for the frescoes adorning the walls of Besançon's Parliament building (built in 1582), now the city's Palais de Justice. He died in Besançon on March 21, 1921.

Our painting is an essential, large-scale work. Rarer than his horizontal paintings, Isenbart's vertical works particularly highlight his art of composition. The tall trees gently stirred by the breeze give a glimpse of a village, with the foothills of the Jura in the distance. The meandering river punctuates the foreground, giving this work a striking depth. Here again, Isenbart offers us a vision of tranquil, restful nature, in which human agitation seems derisory.