Le Botin, Daubigny’s bateau-atelier (or boat-cum-studio)

Since 2018, the association Le Botin d’Auvers-sur-Oise has been offering original Impressionist experiences, welcoming visitors on to the replica of the bateau-atelier, or boat-cum-studio, created for Charles-François Daubigny and named Le Botin. Climb aboard for a trip along the Oise, or an artistic outing allowing you to paint in Impressionist outdoor style (“sur le motif”) on the river itself, or then for a photography session. Choose whichever option suits you best.

It’s thanks to the impetus of descendants of Daubigny, supported by Sequana, an association run by volunteers dedicated to building traditional riverboats, that this replica of Le Botin has come into being. Sequana, based in Chatou, a Seine-side town just west of central Paris, works to preserve and bring to the fore the area’s riverine heritage and culture.

Charles-François Daubigny was a landscape painter and member of the Barbizon School, its artists considered precursors of Impressionism. He would also spend much time in Auvers-sur-Oise, across some 18 years. Surrounded by close friends, notably the architect Eugène-Stanislas Oudinot and the painters Camille Corot and Honoré Daumier, he set up the first artists’ retreat in the village, in his own house there, now open to the public as the Maison-Atelier Daubigny.

An inspiration to numerous Impressionists, including Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, Daubigny was also their forerunner in a technical sense, transforming a former little ferry boat into his bateau-atelier, or boat-cum-studio. Ordering a multicoloured cabin to be fitted on it, he was thus able to paint the landscapes he saw from his very own vessel, going along as he wished. His initial idea was to travel in his boat from Oise to Seine as far as Honfleur to meet up with his friend there, the artist Eugène Boudin. With Charles-François as capitain, Karl Daubigny, his son, as ship’s boy, and Corot as honorary admiral, he did sail from Auvers to Vernon at first, later embarking on longer trips, going down the Seine or up the Oise.

Painting aboard Le Botin encouraged Daubigny both to experiment with unique compositions and to observe as closely as possible the ever-shifting light and reflections on the local rivers, as can be seen in many of his canvases. Following in Daubigny’s wake, Monet would also adopt a bateau-atelier to travel along the Seine and paint on the waters around Giverny and Vernon; a replica of this boat, based at Vernon, offers visitors a way to discover Monet’s Seine thanks to outings organised by the Cercle du Bateau Atelier de Vernon.