Barbizon School "the Little Grove Between Heaven And Earth"

Barbizon School. Oil on canvas, "The Little Grove Between Heaven and Earth," signed lower right Vuillefroy. 38 x 46 cm. French School. Félix Dominique de Vuillefroy-Cassini (1841-1916), painter and entomologist, was a descendant of Jean-Dominique (Giovanni Domenico) Cassini, the famous 17th-century astronomer. A student of Léon Bonnat (1833-1922) and Ernest Antoine Hébert (1817-1908), but advised by Constant Troyon (1810-1865) and Jean François Millet (1814-1875), he made his debut at the Salon in 1867 with a seascape, "The Côte de Grâce at Honfleur," and regularly exhibited horses, pastures, cattle markets, and herds painted with rich, solid impasto. He is also known for his landscapes of the Morvan, Fontainebleau, Normandy, Spain, and Switzerland, where the sun and backlighting effects burst forth in bold patches, which he then rendered in his studio from sketches made on location. Several museums possess his works: Le Mans, Amiens, Lyon, and Reims (source: Schur Dictionary of Minor Masters of Painting). Our painting, executed from life, perhaps in the Morvan or Normandy, belongs to this tradition of the painters of the new school who captured on canvas, in a beautiful sketch, the gathering clouds and the approaching downpour, soon incorporating their work in the studio into a larger piece. Unframed. A small loss of paint in the upper left corner of the clouds and a small lifting of paint in the middle right. Good overall condition. 480 euros.