Lot 43 Dα

Charles Huguet was born in 1821 to a Hugenot family from Berlin and due to this heritage can be linked to the artistic scenes of both France and Berlin. He first learnt to paint in Berlin under Wilhelm August Krause before moving to Paris at the age of 18 to continue his training. In the French capital, he gained the support of Eugène Isabey and was soon to celebrate his first successes with exhibitions in Paris and journeys throughout western Europe, before returning to Berlin in 1848.

Huguet regularly participated in Academic exhibitions. Fontane wrote of him on occasion of the Berlin Art Exhibition of 1863, “High art is not his art. But he is at home in those spheres in which the term 'great' is deliberately avoided: Norman windmills and kitchen boys, sailors and truffle pies, herds of wild sheep and stormy suns setting behind clouds of dust, all those things that can be embraced by the wide arms of genre and landscape, the great 'little world' is where he is at home.”

This French landscape, dated 1850, was presumably painted in Berlin. Huguet here still avoids the more earthy themes listed by Fontane. From an elevated vantage point, the painter gazes from afar at the calmly flowing river and the landscape spreading out into the horizon. Barely perceptible, because they are so tiny, three farm labourers can be seen, as well as the shipping traffic, although this too almost pales into the background of the picture overall.