Narcisse Diaz de la Peña. Monographie et catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint

The work of Narcisse Diaz de la Peña, after winning recognition, being celebrated and enthusiastically collected, as well as appealing to his most illustrious peers, Delacroix, Renoir, Van Gogh, today has become a must for every collector or collection of nineteenth-century art. Landscapist and genre painter, painter of the Orient, of nudes, flowers and dogs beneath trees among the undergrowth, Diaz left a considerable, highly varied oeuvre, achieving an original synthesis between the Barbizon landscape and the taste for the Orient and frivolity of his time. Leader and mainstay, with Théodore Rousseau, of the School of Nature, his work - where the forest is always present - expresses the magic delight of the reverberation of light. His landscapes - the main part of his work - are above all of the forest: the painter delights in painting forest interiors marked by the contrast between shadow and light, the shimmering of foliage, setting up his easel at Bas-Bréau, Apremont and in places graced with ponds and glades near the village of Barbizon. His pastoral scenes express the carnal desire permeating bathers, nudes, nymphs and cupids, lascivious and voluptuous women. In the gorgeous Oriental scenes the atmosphere is steeped in sweetness and sensuality, always sheltered by the forest, protective and enchanting, like his Gypsies, witches or evil spells. And then his flowers, where as early as 1835 the stroke of pure colour was asserted, and his dogs in the undergrowth that the artist cherished with a fond passion. An authentic artist, a fiery temperament, the art of Diaz is not imitation, but creation. Admired by Monet and by Monticelli whom he utterly fascinated, artificer of light and colour, the painter in his work foreshadows a new way of capturing light. Tachiste, he intentionally blurs the details of the form by juxtaposing the colours, and decomposes the light effect by separating each brushstroke. Pre-Impressionist - as of 1872-1874 his studies have all the characteristic features of budding Impressionism -, virtuoso of the palette, Narcisse Diaz dazzles the eye with all the seductions of light and the fascination of a great colourist. The authentication of Diaz' works is extremely tricky because of the great number of his pupils and even greater number of his imitators. A chapter is devoted to his followers and imitators.