Coastal landscape with fishermen, undated
A red morning sun hidden behind clouds bathes the coastal landscape in a warm tone, giving it a calm and tranquil atmosphere. In the centre of the picture, fishermen are getting their boats ready for the upcoming working day by setting sail. In the distance, the first sailing ship can be seen who have already left the coast. In the foreground a fisherman turns his back to the viewer, as if together they are saying goodbye to the boats as they leave their moorings.
The choice of an everyday motif by French artists from the mid-nineteenth century onwards is less linked to the goal of reality-based reproduction – as had previously been the case with the Dutch – but expresses an attitude: The painters willfully downgrade the subject matter of their works in order to oppose the importance of content invoked by the elites and the guidelines of „high art“. This opposition, which places its focus on people‘s everyday lives rather than on historical events or figures, will later go down in art history as realism.
Little is known about the French landscape painter Maurice Buchin. He was born in 1818 in Conliège in the Département of Jura and apprenticed with Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Hesse (1806-1879). Between 1845 and 1876, his name appears repeatedly on the lists of artists exhibited at the Paris Salon. Buchin‘s paintings must therefore have convinced the jury responsible for admission; at times he was even accepted for the exhibition with several works at the same time.