Barge on a River

Daubigny worked for most of his life on the Seine and the Oise north of Paris, and in his day these were busy commercial rivers. Barges carried coal, stone, timber and grain to the capital, hauled along the towpath by horses or by teams of men, and by the middle of the century steam tugs had joined them. Working boats turn up again and again in his river pictures.

The museum names neither the river nor the year. The panel is small, about 22 by 41 centimetres, and signed at the lower left.

By 1880 it was in Providence, Rhode Island, where Mrs James H. Chace bought it. It passed to her daughter, Mrs George H. Davenport of Boston, who lent it to the museum in 1920 and gave it in 1940.